Amnesia
by Blixa
Summary: How is it like? To forget the past, to lost all our memories, friends, enemies. For some a curse, but for some blessing, what finally helped to start a new life. But past is not a package one can lay away. It's glued on our back forever.
1. Who am I?

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

Rated: T

* * *

I woke up feeling wonderful. 

But also, in some indefinable way, strange.

Slowly, as i laid there on the cool bed spread, it dawned on me, that i had absolutely no i idea _where i am_. A hotel bedroom, by the look of it. But with the curtains drawn. I didn't know what city, or even what planet. Then the blank of '_where am i?_' Ballooned into the bigger, the total blank of _WHO AM I?_ It was a question without an answer. My memory was an open book with every page blank. I had no name, no known address, no memories of friends or relatives, or schools or jobs. I had _amnesia_. I got out of bed, and as i did, i realized, with a glance at my naked body, that i am male, reasonably well-put-together, with wry back. But what about my face? That's part of everyone's identity, that should be proof against amnesia. The mirror over the dresser was in angle, so i couldn't see myself from where i stood. I decided to take a simple test, i closed my eyes and took an inventory of how i thought i looked.

Hair? _Long light.  
_Beard? _I don't know.  
_Eyes? _I believe they are blue._

I could hardly be more completely mistaken. For when i looked in the mirror, the stranger i saw, had fuzzy dark nearly green hair. No beard.  
And his eyes were emphatically brown.  
What idiot can have green hair?_ Apparently me._

I took a deep breath and a long look about the hotel room, starting with the dresser. A sheet of the hotel's stationery informed me, that i was a guest of the Sunderland Hotel. There was a room key with a large green plastic tag, showing my room number - 1502. On the nightstand, next to the bed, i found a single ragged woolong bill, i took it. To pass the time, hotel offered a television. Also, a Bible. Pen was placed near the phone. To the left of the dresser was an strange computer on its own metal cart. Too much futuristic, i thought. I opened the bible to the only dog-eared page in the book and i noticed that the page so marked, have been scribbled on. It was the page, on which appropriate texts were cited for those with special needs. The list of texts commended to _'those in doubt and uncertainty'_ have been crossed out, and above the deleted citations of chapter and verse, someone had written 'John 1'.

If i remembered John 1 rightly, it seemed oddly irrelevant to the needs of those in doubt. But never mind.

I searched to the beginning of the Gospel according to St. John. The text was what i remembered to be _'In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God...'_. I laid the bible back. There was a knock on the door. I almost said 'Come in', before i remembered that i didn't have any clothes on. Nowhere in the room, i could see any clothes. _Maybe i was a nudist?_ The knocking repeated, somewhat more loudly. I was beginning to feel just slightly desperate about the clothing situation. I opened the door and stood there in the all-together. A maid took one look at me, smiled, and put the trolley into reverse. I could see, in the mirror over the dresser, that i was blushing red as a beefsteak. I took the red sheet, what covered bed moments ago and wrapped it around myself. I walked into the bathroom. It had the usual amenities of a good, but not over-fancy hotel, a small pink sink encased in formica, what was pretending to be marble, a tiled shower, a toilet, a towel rack with a large towel. But no clothes. I left all the things as they were.

TV turned itself on. There were three buttons on the set. Old model i guessed, a relic to be precise. The first was for on and off, the second was marked F for forward, allowing me to change the channels, but the third was broken off. On channel two there was an ad for Kool-Aid, and then a rerun of 'Wheel of fortune' resumes. The three contestants were trying to guess the letters of someone's name. There was no T in it, no S, no N... I pressed F, TV tuned to the hotel's own cable channel, and the screen filled with heaving breasts and writhing limbs of a closed circuit X-rated movie. I felt just enough arousal, to know that my sexual orientation is definitely heterosexual, but for a moment that all naked flesh only reminded me more vividly my own dilemma.

The phone came to life. It rang.  
I turned the TV off, it could scare the other on the line.

I took the earphone in my hand.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Good morning." Said a woman's voice.

"This is the Registration desk. You are aware, are you not, that the check-out time is twelve o'clock?" The voice from telephone said.

"No." Was my answer.

"If you haven't checked out by that hour, Mr. Cameron, we will have to bill you for another night. But if you wish to extend your stay, I can adjust your bill accordingly. Do you wish to continue your stay?" Woman in the phone did her work well.

"I certainly want to." After a moment i said.

"I assume you will want to put this on your credit card?"

"That would be ok." I didn't known my voice at all.

"I'll have a bellboy bring the readjusted VISA slip to your room momentarily. Have a good day." She greeted me in somewhat learned and tired greeting.

"Cameron."

I tested out the sound of the name she gave me. But could i be sure, that i was the Cameron, what rented this room? If my own signature as 'Cameron' jibed with the one on the receipt the bellboy was bringing... I took the pen in my hand. I tried several practice signatures. The promised bellboy soon appeared, and i wrapped my covers more securely about my waist, i answered his rapping on the door. He presented me with the adjusted hotel bill.

"One moment." I said and took the slip over to the desk to examine it.

I examined the slip and found that a name, which was presumably mine, was typewritten on the top of the statement. I had a name: John Cameron III.  
I signed the bill using my new-found name, and handed it back to the bellboy. Bellboy made a significant cough, he waited for a tip. But i didn't give him one and only money i had. He left with discontented mumble, and i was left to consider what John Cameron's next move should be. Clothes were surely the first priority. I took the key in my hand and opened door. Then i walked into long corridor made to seem still longer by a wallpaper design of continuous horizontal stripes of chocolate brown and dusky orange. To the west, just after the door to my own room, was a door with lighted exit sing above it. On along the corridor to the east the numbers of the rooms increased by increments of one.

Halfway down the corridor there was a branching northward and an arrow directing me to a bank of elevators. For the moment, the hallway was empty, saved for a maid's laundry trolley, some five doors away and myself. Door with exit opened onto the landing of a wide stairwell. The concrete steps and walls were painted battleship gray. I walked the stairs slowly to the next landing. The concrete felt cold under my bare feet. In a moment or two, i found myself before a door marked as _Sunderland health club, authorized personnel only_.

I found myself on a gravel rooftop. Immediately in front of me was a drained swimming pool, surrounded by deck chairs, made of brightly colored metal tubing. Beyond the pool was the penthouse proper, a flat-roofed, windowless, brick structure with a metal door from which the weather had almost entirely peeled away any lettering: '_s de and sau a he lt lub_'.

I entered it. I was in a small reception area, furnished with cast-iron and vinyl armchairs, a water cooler with paper cups, a small formica desk with a stack of application forms, and faded posters of once famous bodybuilders. A sing on the front desk promised, that someone would be _'Back in ten minutes'_. The elevators opened into the reception area from a hallway on one wall. There were two doors behind the desk. The one on the left marked _'Dolls'_, the one on the right _'Guys'_. I entered the guys. I was in the men's locker room. To my right were two changing areas formed by free-standing metal lockers. To my left were some sinks and a large mirror, with doors on either side. The door on the right marked _'Sauna'_, the one to left _'Massage'_. Directly ahead were the showers, and beyond these, a sing pointed the way to the weight room.

As i came to the sauna a blast of superheated air, wrapped my body in what felt like a suit of flames. My heartbeat accelerated, and the narrow confines of the steamy, pine-paneled cell bended, warped and titled. I was barely able to keep myself from falling against the iron stove and its pile of heated rocks. I crumbled onto the bench of wooden slats, and then... But this then was like no other then. It did not follow the time that gone before. Like a fluid under tremendous pressure, the memories suppressed by my amnesia overwhelmed me. At some cue supplied by that hot dark cubbyhole, my past supplanted my present life. I experienced ... the Deja-vu.

I was locked in a cell. It was a bare and dark and smelt of lives gone sour. The only light was a feeble fluorescent glow that slanted in, through the louvered grill in the iron door. I knew the door was iron, because i punched on it. My hands were sore, and my right eye was swollen shut. I ached all over. Worse than the ache was the hunger, and worse than the hunger was the fear that i would never leave that cell alive. I began to scream. I knew it would do no good. They could beat me again, but i couldn't help myself. I screamed the same senseless words over and over, a litany of terror.

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck you."

"Fuck... you..."

At last my screams attracted the attention of my jailer. The grill of the door pushed aside, and his face appeared, leering in the aperture.

"What's the matter, Juanito?" He asked in a drawling, twanging, Texas voice. _Earth?_

"I need food..." His eyes shrank to pinpoints of sadistic pleasure.

"Why sure, Juanito, you'll get fed, just as soon as you ask for it so I can hear you. There are just two little words you got to say, and I'll bring you a nice big bowl of five-alarm chili." He waited for me to say the two words.

"Fuck you..." Were only words, i could offer his slimy face.

"Sorry, Juanito." Jailer said, and slammed the grill shut.

_This is not possible, it is not legal, it cant go on. Not even on a planet like Earth, can a prisoner be treated like this._ I wasn't churched with any crime. There was no trial. One minute i was driving my swordfish back, and next a police was signaling for me to pull off and stop. The worst of it was, that no one knew i was there, and so no one thought to report me missing. Suddenly i understood the meaning of hell. There was no way out.

_No way out._

_No way out._

_No way out..._

And then, sudden as waking from a nightmare, this mind-explosion of memory was over. But was it really a memory, couldn't it have been, instead, some kind of waking nightmare? Aside from this one lurid glimpse of what may have been my past life, i was able to remember nothing else about myself or that prison. _If that was, what my life was like, maybe i shouldn't try to remember it._ _Maybe my amnesia is a blessing in disguise._

"Mr. Cameron, are you conscious, can you hear me?"

A man's face was bending down close to my own. I didn't recognize him. Gradually i realized, that i was no longer in the sauna, but in another smaller room, where i was lying on my back on a masseur's table. _The massage room, this must be._

"He opened his eyes." Another voice said.

"Yes," said the man standing above me, "but there's this funny dazed look in his eyes. The same thing happened when he went into the sauna last night, and I thought, it was from drinking too much. We had to carry him down to his room."

He turned his attention to me. "Hey Mr. Cameron, are you all right?"

"He's trying to say something," the other voice observed, "but the words are so slurred... do you think he's still drunk?"

The man above me bended over to sniff my breath.

"Doesn't seem to be. No, I figure its just heat prostration. Tell you what, Buddy, you mop up around the poll, and I'll give Cameron here a once-over-lightly."

"Whatever he was wearing last night must still be in his locker. After that I would appreciate it, if you would steer him back to his room."

The man who done most of the talking, began to massage my body. I found it strangely soothing. Tension from my mind and muscles disappeared. He turned the sunlamp on and left me alone in the room. The warmth of the lamp filled me with a strange peaceful passivity. I listened to the unmistakable crunch of steel through steel, and a moment later the masseur returned with a pair of metal cutters in one hand and a green canvas satchel in the other.

"Sorry to have to cut through your padlock, Mr. Cameron. But I remember how frustrated you got last night trying to remember the combination. I would have cut the lock off then, but you'd passed out in the sauna first. You feeling a little better now?"

"Yes..." Was my answer.

"That's good, Mr. Cameron. You're going to be just fine. Just steer clear of the sauna in the future. And take the salt tablets. Now I'll leave this satchel here with you, and when you've got some clothes on, Buddy will help you down to your room. Okay?"

I smiled weakly and nodded okay, the masseur left me alone with the green canvas satchel and my own privity. I zipped open the satchel and found: jeans, a t-shirt laundered from red to rosy pink, a plastic bookbag, a pair of running shoes, well broken-in, and a small maroon address book. _Thank god._  
Quickly i put on the clothes, that were in the gym bag. From the fit of both the jeans and the sneakers, there could be little doubt, that they were mine. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror of the massage room, and i saw, once again, a complete stranger. But at least he was a stranger with clothes on, and that was some improvement. There was a knock on the door, and the masseur asked.

"Are you ready to go back to your room?"

"Yes." I answered, with voice full of strength again.

He was full of relief, when i followed Buddy out. He took my satchel, bookbag and key to the room 1502. We took the elevator down to 15, and Buddy led the way to my room. Once i was inside the door, he handed me the satchel, bookbag and their contents and said good-bye, with a look in his eyes that conveyed his low opinion of men who make a habit of fainting in saunas. I breathed a sigh of relief, as i closed the door behind me. Room 1502 felt almost like home.  
The first thing i noticed, was the late afternoon light, streaming across the skyscrapers of the city,flashing from windows and walls of glass. _Mars. _It was late, in the day, and the sun was low in the sky. On the bed was lying a white tuxedo. I took off the sneaks, the t-shirt, and the jeans. _No sense in getting just half undressed_, and stood naked in my room. I was just about to put on the tuxedo, when phone rang. I went to the dresser, as i draped the tuxedo over my arm, and answered the phone with a rather tentative.

"Hello?"

"John!" Boomed a man's gravelly voice.

"Where have you been, son? We've been down here in the lobby for the last couple of hours, calling your room every five minutes. I guess that margarita last night was your undoing. Well, no matter, so long as you're on your feet again. Have you tried on your white bib and tucker yet?" Telephone was resonating with his loud voice.

"Not yet, thanks to your interruption." I answered, calmly. With no idea what was going on.

"Well, get moving, my boy! Your bride is starting to think you may be planning to leave her standing at the altar. So unless you want me to come up there with a shotgun, you get into them fancy duds and report to the lobby on the double!" I needed to hold the phone far from my ear.

He hanged up and i wondered, fleetingly, if getting married is usually this easy. _Why, its like... putting on a suit of clothes._  
With a sense partly of self-amazement, as though i were a matador, getting dressed for the first time in his suit-of-lights, i put on the white tuxedo. The frilly suit, the white bow tie, the pants, then everything else. I was just about out of the room, when i checked in my pocket to see if i remembered to take the room key. I had it. I returned to the room to pick up anything else, i thought good to have with me. However i decided to leave most of the hotel's possessions in the room. Apparently i possessed a sense of morality. I left the room and closed the door behind me. Then i headed down the corridor. One of the elevators arrived, at 15 the moment i pressed the down button. I got in and rode to the lobby.

I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, of Sunderland Hotel, and the first thing i saw, was myself looking elegantly sheepish in my white tuxedo, for the doors of the facing elevator were made of mirror-glass. A TV sat next to the reception area, and it was playing to a man wearing a cowboy hat, slumped in a high wing-back leather chair. He noticed me and gestured me to come to him. I never saw him before of course. He was tall thin man with an expression of 'good humor', so forced, that his smile seemed to be achieved the way some facelifts are, with little fishhooks pulling the flesh into place. His black suit hanged loosely on his spare frame, and the few strands of hair that have escaped the band of his black hat, were the color of dirty khaki. His eyes were small and he had a tendency to squint. The buckle of his belt spelled out his name in big brass capitals - _LUKE_.

"Johnny my boy!" Boomed the man in the Stetson, in a voice as abrasive as desert sand.

"Your dear old mother - God rest her soul - would be so proud to see you now!" He advanced toward me, grinning like a friendly skull, with his long, thin arms extended to embrace me, and before i could back away or offer any other protest the embrace was complete.

Not what you'd call warm, just a short symbolic collision between my torso and his, with him maintaining the same cadaverous grin all the time.

"Well, my boy," He asked releasing me, "are you feeling better after your big toot?"

"Not much, it drained some energy, what about you?" I answered, like a interaction in his monologue.

"I'm feeling just fine, but that's no matter now."

"Johnny boy, this is no time for any funny business. I gotta go down to this here rats' cellar and fetch back that preacher. Meanwhile you'd better go up to the chapel on the next floor and smooth things over with the little lady." He continued, no chance to stop him.

"I think she was starting to worry that you was going to leave her standing at the altar a second time, but i told her, 'Honey', i said, just joking like, 'if that Cameron boy walks out on you this time with another dumb excuse like the last one, he's going to have to answer to your daddy.'"

"And then, Johnny, I showed her what I was packing..." The man held open jacket of his suit to reveal a shoulder holster from which, butt of a small gun projected.

"...and that seemed to ease her worrying a whole lot. Nuff said, my boy. Do you take my meaning?"

I shook my head, and continued wondering how anyone who'd ever met this man, as i must have in the life i couldn't remember, could ever forget him, for he was memorably ugly.

"Glad to hear it. Cause I wouldn't want to gave to do anything to make my little cactus blossom unhappy. You've given that poor gal enough trouble to last her a lifetime, and from here on out, Mr. Know-It-All Cameron the Third, you're going to do right by my little Alice, or my name ain't Luke Dudley."

"Now scoot up those stairs and give her some of that sweet talk that got the two of you into this situation."

I looked around for some way out of this mess, the mess called marriage.  
Luke patted his concealed pistol.

"I said 'Scoot', boy, and when I say 'Scoot' I'm not talking about by-and-by. I'm saying 'Scoot now.' Get up to that chapel."

I stood before a large rosewood door, bearing a mottled brass nameplate, declaring that to be the All-faith chapel. I entered the chapel, which was dim and fragrant with the mingled scents of flowers and candlewax. It seemed to be deserted. I looked around, the chapel was about twenty feet square, windowless, with a high coffered ceiling and a terra cotta floor. In the center of the room was a large round slab of marble, too low to dine at, but too high to be a coffee table. Grouped about it on three sides, were pews of blond wood. Behind it was a lectern, flanked by a vase of wilting gladiolae on a free-standing marble column and a large candelabra, its candles burned down to the sockets. The general effect of that was, a funeral parlor without a corpse. High up on three of the walls, forming a kind of frieze, was the All-Faith Chapel's chief claimed to distinction, a much darkened mural representing all the faiths of mankind worshiping the Supreme Being, painted _(i knew from the plate before me)_ in 1938 by Maxfield Parrish. Christ, Moses, Mohamed, Buddha, Confucius, Martin Luther, and Mary Baker Eddy were representing sitting down at, or standing about a table and waving their arms. I looked around for that woman then, but she wasn't there.

Just as i were about to leave the empty chapel, the door opened behind me, and a woman's voice exclaimed.

"John! Oh my darling, you're here!"

I turned around to confront the figure of a woman in bridal gown. She was wearing a floor-length gown of creamed white satin,  
trimmed with lace and taffeta. A veil of yellowed lace obscured her face. She had thin, well-proportioned figure, or a good dressmaker. Really, there was more of the wedding gown and veil in evidence, than of the woman.

"Isn't it wonderful?" She said.

"I've always wanted to be married in full bridal regalia, and even if there isn't a great crowd to see us, its so much more solemn like this." Alice, _(i think that was her name)_ continued, then her behavior changed.

"Take me in your arms! Kiss me! Make me yours!"

I grasped the lower edge of the veil with a gentle firmness and raised it slowly, to reveal a pale, pretty and slightly frightened face. Her eyes fixed on mine, imploringly, but she bitted her lower lip, as though to keep from asking out loud the question that was in her eyes. But her eyes needed no interpreters. _Do you love me?_ They asked. Her lips met mine eagerly, and the satin of her gown, crushed to the polyester of my tux. The invitation was irresistible. The kiss intensified from perhaps to entirely. A kiss like that, left no room to doubt one thing, that woman wanted me. But why that purple occupied my sight?

After some moments of amorous silence, Alice, in a strong yet quavery voice, asked.

"John, will you marry me now?"

I backed away, in that sweet thing i forgot, _as well as my entire life_, that she wanted to get married.

"John!" The woman in the bridal dress shrieked, "please don't abandon me like this. I'll die of shame if you leave me again. Surely, whatever reason you may have for changing your mind, its something we can talk about. Its Daddy isn't it? He's such a bully, I know. But once you get to know him he's really a sweet person, and in any case, John, once were on Ganymede, he won't be able to bother us anymore."

"I..." I tried to say something.

She threw herself on her knees before me and lifted up her arms (same gesture in which i saw Mary Baker Eddy earlier) imploringly.

"Please, John. Please say you'll marry me. Is it yes or no?"

"No." My mouth somehow slapped her into the face.

Considering her almost hysterical manner until now, she accepted my refusal with surprising dignity.

"Very well then, I won't argue."

She turned to leave and then turned round again to hand me a small blue box bearing the words _'Tiffany Co.'_.

"I almost forgot to give you this. I brought it with your money, so it belongs to you, until you decide that you want to put it on my finger. Will you please take the box, John?"

I accepted the box from her, and then in a flash of white satin and yellow lace, she was out the door of chapel. I took a step forward to pursue her and fell to the terra cotta floor, tripped by a kneeling pad. As i pushed myself up from the dark tiles, a familiar vertigo overcame me. My body seemed much heavier, a weight for my arms raised and i slumped back to the floor, watching the great octagons of terra cotta bending and warping, waving and growing black. My last conscious thought was, that i may be the first bridegroom ever, to have fainted when left standing at the altar. A dim faraway voice seemed to tell me to do something. But it was so far away and i was so comfortable, there was a sunset above me, all with stripes of gold and indigo. White angel floated above me calling out my name. The same voice called to me. It was nearer now, an annoying buzz. I blinked my eyes and shifted my head, and saw a magenta dawn silhouetting the poplars.  
The angel was gone. I woke up with a strange stinging sensation on the side of my head, a pain that seemed geometrically precise. I realized that i was lying on the terra cotta tiles for some time, staring in a daze at the two wings of the mural frieze by Maxfield Parrish. There were flecks of blood on the tiles where i laid.

"Fuck..." Not very suiting in the chapel.

The very instant word left my lips, i felt a strangling sensation and then a strange dizziness. A voice from my lost childhood rang in my ears.

"You must never, NEVER use language like that here!" I fell on my knees once again, unconscious. The double faint.

I was dreaming.  
I was dreaming that i have been asleep and that i woke up to find myself in a strange hotel. The only light in the room came from the hotel's gigantic neon light, what glowed a baleful red outside the window.

"Spike, Spike are you there?" Voice whispered in the crimson twilight.

I knew that i was that 'Spike' and that i had to answer the voice truthfully, but my mouth was dry, tongue paralyzed with fear.

"Come here, Spike." Voice insisted.

"Come here to me, in the mirror."

Obedient to the voice, i went to the mirror. The figure in the mirror leaned forward to peer at me intently. He was dressed all in white, like a bridegroom or a ghost. He had no face, only eyes with different colors, what stared anxiously from the smooth ovoid of his head, he smiled, recognizing me.

"Excellent." He whispered.

As i entered the mirror, the beckoning figure vanished. I followed him out of the room and caught another glimpse of him, at the far end of the corridor. I ran toward him and reached his side, just as the subway train pulled into the station. The door opened, and i woke up, with a shudder. I brushed my arms and left the chapel, with my hands in pockets. I came into the lobby. Across from the elevators was the registration desk, then the exit onto some street. To one side of the desk was a newsstand, then a large curving staircase going up to the second floor. Beside the staircase a hand-lettered sign said.

_The Sunderland Hotel is happy to welcome the new visitors to the Tharis city._

Beyond the staircase, was an entrance to the Rathskeller Bar and Grill. In the far corner of the reception area, a lonely TV mutely displayed evening news. Near the TV area was large couch and table, which served as a lounge. I chose the invitation to relax, offered by a large womblike sofa, to ease off pain in my head. I watched a news program, what was in progress, but i couldn't be say to listen to it, for a caucus of dissident members of the 'new visitors' was carrying on a rather noisy argument over its platform, and the sound on the TV was turned quite low. I saw a smiling reporter with a microphone standing outside a large stone building. Momentarily, my attention diverted by the shouts of the contending factions of the caucus of the 'new visitors'. When i looked back at the TV, i thought i saw my own face on the screen. I looked dirty and very unhappy. Small wonder, for that fleeting framed portrait, at the top of the screen, by the word wanted, and at the bottom of the screen by numerals. I strained to hear the announcers voice and caught only the end of report.

"... killed during his escape from the Earth penitentiary located in Texas, where the prisoner was serving a two years sentence for the possession of an illegal substance. He is believed to be armed and should be considered dangerous." Weather report followed this caution. _Tomorrow will be another sunny day_.

I took the newspaper. The Post's headline was: _Taxi strikers battle police_. I skimmed through the news and ads in the paper, looking for some hint of who i was, some special knowledge, some keenness of interest or hunger what could be a clue to the life i forgot. I turned to page 17 and saw a blurry picture of my scowling face. The caption under the photo read:

_Search for escaped convict continues,_

_Authorities in the Earth area continue to look for Spike Spiegel, wanted in connection with the slaying of a guard, while Spiegel escaped two months ago from a Earth's prison. Spiegel, sentenced to be armed and is considered dangerous._

I noticed the bellboy who brought my room receipt, in the far corner of the lobby. He motioned for me to walk over to him. Curious about what he wanted, i accepted his invitation. As i approached, the bellboy raised his hand as though in greeting. Considering i stiffed him of his tip, it seemed very friendly of him, and i lifted my hand to wave back. As i did so, i realized the bellboy wasn't greeting me, but chided me for not giving him a tip earlier.

"If you'd tipped me, I would have pretended like I forgot your face, and I never would have made any connection to your picture in the newspaper."

"Maybe next time you're in a situation like this, you'll remember to tip, huh?" Bellboy regarded me with a happy sneer.

"You little..." I was about to shout, but he interrupted.

"You should be more careful, Mr. Spiegel. I mean, you are being kind of conspicuous for a man on the lam from a murder rap. The police have already been around once showing your picture. You're lucky nobody but me recognized you. But I wouldn't push my luck staying on in... wasn't it room 1502?"

I was too startled to reply and he continued.

"There was nothing about a bounty for turning you in, so I didn't say anything then. I figured I'd wait around and talk to you first. I couldn't help but notice that Tiffany box. Will you let me have it so I'll forget I ever saw you?"

"Take it." I handed him the box, Alice gave me.

"And remember one thing, stay the hell out of my way."

He took the box and continued.

"Thanks Mr. Spiegel, or i guess i should say Mr. Cameron, thanks a whole lot. I served time in the slammer myself, so i wish you the best of luck. As a friend I would also suggest that you not go back to your room. They're watching it."

He disappeared through a door behind the reception desk. I exited the Sunderland with the feeling a POW must had, when he cut through the last strands of barbed wire, separating him from freedom. It felt great to be a single faceless, nameless atom among the million others churning about, in the grind of Tharis streets. It felt safe. There was already nighttime, but the sidewalks still teemed with people, and the streets were heavily trafficked and bright with the sum-total wattage of so many streetlights, headlights and lighted sings. In the windows of the darkened shop fronts, i saw myself, mirrored and felt an utterly inappropriate glow of vanity. The white tux made me look like a refugee from the chorus line of a musical comedy and in peculiar way it served as camouflage. People stared, but they were staring at the tuxedo, not me.

I became frustrated of myself as a homeless, as i saw blind man begging for money on the corner of street.

"Well..." I smiled and entered my pockets with hands.

"Whatever happens, happens."


	2. Pencil smudges

Rating: Still the same.

Disclaimer: Computer used in the story is owned by IBM.

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_God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion. --Pliny the Elder, 23-79_

_With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. --John Cameron III._

-

I wandered around the streets with a woolong in my pocket and thought about myself. Then i remembered that blind guy before the Sunderland and got idea. A young couple carried on a polite conversation, as their leashed wire-haired terriers developed a more intimate acquaintanceship, which the dogs' owners studiously ignored. I held out my hand and said.

"Please, if you could spare any change...?"

The person i asked for money hesitated for a moment and then gave me few coins, though they were probably wondering where i got my outfit.

A kid, about eight years old, going on fourteen, looked at me with a smirk and said.

"Hey, you need bread? Wanna earn easy money?"

"Sure." I answered his invitation.

He handed me a bottle of Widnex and rather greasy dishrag.

"You can earn plenty, washing windshields. Just do it when the turkeys stop for a light. But be careful, man. The cops will have you alone around the Maureen tunnel, but don't try it where the rich folks live."

"What about you?" I asked when i understood his gesture.

He left, doing a cartwheel.

"Me, I got me a new business now, I'm gonna be the break-dancing superstar of Tharis! See you on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!"

"Smart kid."

I mumbled to myself. Never mind.  
Meanwhile i got really tired and searched for somewhere to sleep, luckily just on the other side of the street was an abandoned tenement. I mount the steps and squeezed round door, what hanged, twisted from a single hinge. I found myself in a cramped vestibule. The building once held _(by count of the gutted mailboxes)_ twelve apartments. The inner doorway of the vestibule stood wide open, allowing a very dim view of a narrow, shadowy hallway. I went through the open door and entered that hallway. There was a smell of must and wet ashes. My feeling that I've been here was now almost a certainty. I went to the foot of the staircase and found, that there was only a foot and a head. Where the main body of the stairs could be, was a gaping hole. From the floor above a pair of feral cats peered down at me with the complacence of secure ownership. They knew the upstairs was theirs. Then the white cat followed the tiger stripped somewhere.

I entered, something what must have been a railroad flat. The room was empty, expect for a ruined television set, its shattered screen spread across the warped linoleum floor like silvery autumn leaves. A pair of windows, what once looked out on the street, have been covered by sheet metal, but there were smaller windows looking onto an airshaft, and these admitted a murky fraction of the outside light. I could faintly see a doorway leading to the north, and the hall doorway to the east. I headed north, and came into something what must have been the bedroom of that apartment. I saw a rectangle of greyness on the floor. I tested it with the toe of my shoe. At least that was a room with a bed, or the remains of one.

I laid down on the charred and moldy mattress, closed my eyes and fell asleep almost instantly. In the last hour of the night i had a dream, and when i woke up, to the first gray monochromes of dawn, i tried to remember what I've dreamt, because i knew that the dream explained, why this building inspired such sense of deja-vu. All i could remember, however, was a woman's face. She smiled and spoke some words, was one of them _"Cheese?"_, and just as i were about to kiss her i woke up. So beautiful. The curve of her lips, the arch of her brow, the radiance of her hair, that smile: _Perfection._ I hoped that the dream arose from some memory of the life I've lived, not from my imagination, for if there was such woman in the world, then my life had a long-term purpose: love.

The light of another day revealed the dismal reality of my waking life. I got up from the mattress feeling stiff, but reasonably rested.

As i left the tenement, i tried to think what now? I took the matchbook what was inside the bookbag and opened it. It was empty and i wondered why I've kept it. It was white with an orange coat of arms. Written below that: _'Princeton Club, 15 W. 43rd Street.'_

On my way to Princeton, feeling of hunger attacked my stomach. I looked around. There was a Chock Full o' Nuts. The interior of the restaurant was decorated in stylish bright red formica. A counter with stools decorated with condiment containers, containing mustard and relish. Small square napkins stood erect in a spring-loaded dispenser. At the moment i was the only customer except for a man apparently conversing with a cup of coffee. I sat down at the counter and looked at the menu on the wall, which offered me a choice of: _Frankfurter, Burger, Cheese sand, Donut, Coke, Coffee..._

"What can I get for you, Charlie?" The counterman asked me.

"Donut." I chose the less expensive food from the list.

"One donut coming right up."

"Anything else to eat?" He asked me in sense of better trade.

"No."

The attendant totaled up my purchase on the register. I handed him the money. After paying him, i checked to see how much money i had left. Not much.  
My order arrived. I quickly consumed it, then got up and left the restaurant.

As i slowly came into the street with the Princeton Club, a young man wearing a black suit, a white shirt, a clip-on bow tie, and a painfully sincere smile approached me.

"I have good news for you, friend. Luke can save your life! Go to Roadway and 108th Street. Believe it!" He turned and walked away quickly.

"Yeah, right... with that gun." I said and entered the Club.

I was in the lobby, fully convinced on the evidence of the empty matchbook, that i was an alumnus of the university and a member of the club. I took a quick scan of the interior and made a mental note to write to the Club's Board of Directors on the subject of the dangers of creeping seediness. Surely, such venerable institution, should not be allowed to sag into such a state of shabbiness. Perhaps contributions should be solicited for a Redecorating Fund. Just as I've began mentally to frame this appeal, the doorman asked me what my business was. I explained that i believed myself to be a member. He assured me, that he had an infallible memory for faces and that i weren't. I insisted on seeing a list of the membership. When that list proved that there was no John Cameron among the members of the Princeton Club, the doorman escorted me out to the street and waved me goodbye with a smile of withering condescension.  
I felt as though I'd been expelled from the university on the first day of my freshman year: it was a very brief career.

"John Cameron!"

I looked around to see who called me in that deep, cracked voice. She called again and i spotted her, an immense woman wearing layer upon layer of dirty rags.  
She sat on the sidewalk across the street from the Princeton Club, surrounded by shopping bags. I crossed the street and approached her.

"How do you know me?" I asked.

"We were lovers, honey," she confided with a sly smile. "And I didn't have an angry sheriff for a daddy like that girl you told me about in Texas. Don't you remember?"

"I'm afraid I don't remember anything. I have amnesia." I replied.

She confessed that she knew about my amnesia, for two weeks earlier, I had a long conversation with her about it, right there at her post of duty. At that time I gave her a letter, what she have to gave me if i ever turned up again, as i did, thanks to the matchbook from the Princeton Club. After some minutes of polite conversation about the perils and pleasures of being destitute in the Mars greatest city, i took my leave of the shopping bag lady and opened the letter I wrote to myself. It read.

_Dear self,  
In case you haven't been able to get into your strongbox at the hotel, the password comes from the first lines of the Gospel according to John. You will need what's in that box. So get it. _

_Fond regards from, Guess Who._

Congratulating myself on my foresight, I torn up the note and threw it away. Only I had the password.

I passed one street and saw a telephone booth. Somehow, number 555-6200 rang in my head. I entered the pay telephone at that corner, which looked as though it was vandalized. It required coins, luckily i begged before. I pressed the buttons and heard dialing sound.

"Hi, this is Tiny Tykes Talent Town, Tharis newest and most successful Children's Modeling Agency. We can't answer the phone right now, but please leave a message after the beep." I only waited after that, saying nothing.

"We're located at 25W. 19th and providing free-of-charge evaluations of your Tiny Tyke's modeling potential." Who the hell wants that?

I tried to head west, i bumped my nose against glass, i realized it would be prudent to leave the telephone enclosure. I left.

Again i appeared on 53rd Street, where the Sunderland Hotel stood. Across the street, a glass tower rose above the Museum of Modern Art, Tharis big Moma. I entered the Sunderland and stood once again in the lobby. Across from the elevators was the registration desk, then a door to the vault. I walked over to the registration desk, where the clerk was patiently going about his duties.

"Excuse me, I am Mr. Cameron, can i please see my vault box." I asked politely.

"Oh yes, your vault box. Follow me and I'll show it to you." The clerk replied.

"Mr. Cameron, I thought I should tell you that a woman came to the desk about an hour ago and was very insistent, that she be allowed to examine your safe deposit box. She said she was your wife, but she had no identification, and you weren't in your room, and at last she went away."

"I hope - if she was indeed your wife - that she was not too much inconvenienced. But we really can't allow anyone to have access to the safe deposit boxes expect those who've singed for them." Clerk continued.

"A woman?"

"I thought her a very attractive and quite smartly dressed. Of course, I did feel suspicious, having earlier spoken to the young lady, Miss Dudley, who had reserved the All-faith Chapel for your wedding and whom I understood to be your intended bride." I made an angry face after he said this.

"Of course none of that is my business." Clerk was lucky.

"Please follow me, and I will let you in to examine the contents of the box."

The desk clerk unlocked the metal door of a cubbyhole of a room and i followed him inside. Two of the walls were given over to steel strongboxes of various sizes. There was a small table with a wooden chair by it. On the table was a computer, keyboard and monitor, which connected by a black electric cord to a kind of dashboard projecting from the wall. He showed me where my strongbox was, number 334, switched on the computer, typed a few instructions on the keyboard, and left the room with that parting advice.

"The security system will allow as many as four errors - so do type carefully. Remember, the computer understand a blank space as another letter. If I can be of further assistance, I'll be at the desk outside."

He left me in the small strongbox vault, facing the alert-looking monitor, with its cursor blinking in front of the blank space, where i was supposed to type in the password. _Gospel bible._ I tried John 1. Password incorrect. _Eight letters. Start... word. Word!_ I remembered John 1 and wrote - _With God_.  
With a click of instant recognition the little metal door of strongbox 334, opened and a massage appeared on the monitor before me. _'Your vault box is now unlocked and may be opened for your examination.'_

I lifted the gray metal lid of the box. The strongbox contained a single old Compact Disc in a plain paper sleeve. I felt equal pangs of curiosity and of disappointment. The disc could have the answer to my basic question of _WHO AM I_, but i felt like a kid who unwrapped a Christmas present and had to say thank you for new underwear. I examined the disc. Label read: _User Friendly Computer Store, 56th St. and Nosidam_.

My head and body told me, that i could use some rest. I headed back to the tenement, and entered the bedroom then a back room. A pair of windows facing north looked out at a back lot embellished with a decade's, perhaps a century's, accumulation of broken bottles, viewed through the lattice ironwork of a rickety fire escape. There was a cast iron bathtub in one corner of the room, a doorless icebox sprawled in its back to the floor, and a poster on the wall, what posed the question: _'What if they gave a war and nobody came?'_ By the looks of that place, the question was not posed soon enough. The shattered bottles outside the window triggered just the shadow of a memory - my hands deftly mixing the contents of an odd collection of bottles over a rickety oval table in a hot, dirty room. I held a flask up to the light and started to shout excitedly to the empty room. But before i could grasp at the heart of my exultation, it faded into the drab reality of the tenement walls, leaving me as confused and dejected as before. I returned into the bedroom.

I did not find it as easy to sleep there, as i did the first time. The smell of the mattress, the rustling of rats in the rubble, and sheer anxiety kept me awake. But at last I fell into a light doze, and again I dreamt of the woman, just as last night and again she smiled at me, and called me by name: _"Spike! Spike, where are you?"_  
I woke up, aching with the need to tell her, I was there beside her and always would be. Then the feeling faded, and the mists of my amnesia erased her beauty.

I got up from the mattress feeling stiff just as yesterday.

I came at 56th St. and entered the User Friendly store.  
It looked like it was either not yet opened for business or recently gone bankrupt. There were only few computers in sight, Elppa, a Erodommoc and a PC by new founded IBM. Various products lined the wall, including some games and new holographic software, as well as hardware. The other person in the store, a woman in what almost but not quite a man's suit, approached me. I decided to rent one hour on IBM. I paid the saleswoman for an hour on the computer, and she led me to a back room about the size of a large walk-in closet. When i was alone, i entered the disc and monitor displayed the introductory message.

_-Highly Confidential-  
Do not access material on this disk unless it is YOURS.  
You will know if it is yours, only if you don't know who you are._

_Directory of Cameron:  
1. File1 5k TXT 4-Jul-2072  
2. File2 6k TXT 3-Jul-2072  
3. File3 8k TXT 2-Jul-2072  
4. File4 7k TXT 1-Jul-2072  
5. -File5- 14k Bad 30-Jun-2072_

It was text based, so most of people couldn't get in by simple commands.  
I typed in File5.

_Access to Cameron:File5.txt has failed: File is not of type TXT.  
Block read error.  
_Damn.

I tried the File4. By dates.  
_Access to Cameron:File4.txt is controlled by the correct answer to the following riddle:_

_Without and within  
I am skin after skin,  
Core I have none,  
And I shall be undone  
By the slice of your knife.  
It's a hell of a life.  
Who am I?_

I wrote, _Onion_. - Access authorized.

The notebook in which I had been keeping a day-by-day journal of my amnesia, has disappeared. Stolen? Misplaced and-or forgotten? With it is gone the metal cash-box in which I'd kept it locked - and, at this point, virtually all first-hand memory of my past. I remember passages that I've read in the past few days in that notebook, but my concern in those pages seemed to be more with analyzing the process of my disease, a kind of progressive amnesia, that I developed in the course of research into a small-scale epidemic of the disease, in a town named fiction. Even the recent past I remember spottily. What I can recall of earlier years is quite fragmentary. My memory is like a box of family snapshots, unlabeled and all jumbled together - and the family is a stranger's. Miss Abrams, the young woman who has been helping me all through these difficulties in countless practical ways, tells me that it was my death, months ago, that precipitated the more severe memory losses of recent days. For instance, in the missing journal, I exhumed, in often tiresome detail, memories of my childhood and school years - the names of school fellows, the furnishings of the houses I'd lived in - my course of studies, all in an effort to kind a pattern in what kinds of memories are proof against the amnesia and what kind are likeliest to be erased. The pattern is clear enough in that regard. Skills, intellectual or manual, seem impervious. Miss Abrams says she rented this computer for me so I could gather my thoughts and try to recall my work, but the first discs I recorded in my journal have already vanished. I must somehow guard these physical manifestations of my memory. I remember the computer's operation, even programming, perfectly. But this memory that serves me so well at these impersonal tasks, is a sieve with regard to the details of my own life. Worse, the memories I do have are a palimpsest of contradictions. Even my own name seems uncertain, for one of my few distinct memories of my school years is sitting down to take an exam in mathematics and writing. On outside of the blue test booklet is the name 'Zane Bester'.

This was the end of File4. I exited it and tried File3.  
_Access to Cameron:File3.txt is controlled by the correct answer to the following riddle:_

_I am evolution's way  
Of saying:  
'You've had long enough to play.'  
I'm the unveiling of the skull,  
The barnacles sheered off the hull  
To show the noble wreck beneath,  
As all shall lear who feel my teeth...  
Who am I?_

I entered word _Bald_.  
It opened and i read.

I am in the classic situation of a man who must find some way to remember to tie a string round his finger, so as not to forget to tie a string round his finger... and so on, in an endless vicious circle. Only by accident did I discover this disc with its incredible information, for since I made it my amnesia has been virtually total. I've no recollection of keeping the journal that earlier file speaks of, nor of reading that journal - and why couldn't I have, as I said I would, at least set down what I then remembered having read? Alice Dudley (who I presume is the same person referred to in that first file as 'Miss Abrams', though I did not describe her there) now tells me we are engaged! When I reacted to the news as though it were a sample of black humor, she became vindictive and threatening. She says she'll give me another week to marry her OR ELSE. Or else what? I wanted to know. Or else she'd let the police know my whereabouts. I tried to buy time, saying I'd consider the offer on its merits. Meanwhile I insisted that she fill me in on her past, if she refused to tell me about mine. She then spun out a preposterous fiction about discovering me, wandering on Earth, in a state of delirium, and how we'd fallen in love as she'd nursed me back to health. She intends for us to fly to Ganymede on false passports and take up fishing! If I weren't sure she was trying to con me, I'd have thought she was crazy. Both are probably the case. And me - I'm not crazy? Only after I had two hours to myself, in which time I was supposed to pack a suitcase full of clothes etc. to take the hotel we're moving to ('Why must we move?' I demanded; 'I can't explain, John. You must trust me!'), only then, rummaging through the things here in the apartment, did I discover the miniature time-capsule I'd made - this disc and an address book with assorted phone numbers tucked away inside an old copy of Scientific Am. She now calls herself Alice Dudley. But if the disc and the address book too well - and then forget having hidden them... would file 5 have the answers I need? I cannot seem to gain access to it (something wrong with the disc, it seems), so I may never find out.

I clicked on the file2

_Access to Cameron:File2.txt is controlled by the correct answer to the following riddle:_

_With every question that I pose  
The keener curiosity grows.  
Who? I ask, and then a moment later,  
And why? And how?  
And where's our waiter?  
What am I?_

I typed a question mark. - Access authorized.

I have become a virtual prisoner of Room 1502 of the Sunderland Hotel - but you may have no idea who 'I' am, or no better idea than I do, or than you do, if you're me. I mean, I assume that you must be in the same fix I am, or even a worse fix. Facts, I better stick to facts. This afternoon my self-declared lover and fiance 'Alice Dudley', who may be someone else entirely, according to what 'I' have written on the files within this file - read on, and answer the next riddle, and read on some more - anyhow, Alice Whoever appeared outside the door of 1502 and got very impatient rattling the chain lock while I secreted this disk, which I had just entered in the computer. I discovered the disc in my gym bag I'd deposited in the gym of the hotel, having gone there thanks to a note I'd left in the Bible here in the room. If this seems confusing, excuse me, I fell confused. Anyhow, I let this Alice Dudley in the room. She came bearing a Chinese takeout dinner, which I refused to eat, from a paranoid suspicion that my dinner might be mind-alerting. And for absence of meat. Something has been alerting my mind, and that's a fact! So I ordered an alternate meal from room service and while I was waiting for it, Alice Whoever was eating moo goo pan, she explains that I'm engaged to her, and have amnesia (which I knew very well already, thank you!), as a result (she claims) of my pre-martial anxieties. 'Who am I?' I kept asking her, and her reply was always 'Don't ask.' because apparently whenever I'm told who I am I black out again and am back to square one... Impasse. Though I doubt most of what she tells me, I can't, on the basis of the lovemaking that followed the moo goo gai pan, doubt her essential good will toward me. Call it love even, at least on her side. But it isn't love I need now, it's information, and that was in short supply. I keep thinking, tomorrow is another day, and maybe I'll figure out who I am and what to do. Maybe I'll find a machine that will read the last riddle - I can't seem to get this thing to access it. And meanwhile, before I black out, which begins to feel like the next likely event, I'd better think of someone to tuck this disc away, and seal up what I've just written with another damned rhyming riddle. Is there a method to my madness? I don't know. I mean, if you were me, what would you do? And further paranoid suspicion: what if I didn't write the earlier files on the disc? Maybe an answer to that is in the riddles. They may not be that hard to answer, I can't say, but if I can invent another now, to seal this bit of text inside its rhymes, that seems a kind of guarantee that whoever sealed the earlier texts with such riddles must be me.

"Shit..."

I tried File1.

_Access to Cameron:File1.txt is controlled by the correct answer to the following riddle:_

_Although I talk of no one and  
Of nothing else but me and mine  
I hope you will not understand  
Just who I am until the line  
Revealing all my tradiddle  
As the substance of -------._

I entered _riddle_. - access authorized.

I am writing this message to myself on a rented computer in room 1502 of the Sunderland Hotel, but beyond that one certain fact anything else I might say about who I am or why I'm here is a matter of faith and-or inference. I'm registered at the desk downstairs as John Cameron III, and my bill is being paid for by a VISA card in that name (no idea where the card is though, dammit), but all my efforts to dig up solid info about this 'John Cameron' have met with no success. VISA insists my records are confidential and can't be divulged over the phone. The WHO'S WHO at the library shows no entry for John Cameron III. The name is probably an alias. This much is certain: Whoever I am, I'm suffering from a disease that causes a progressively worse amnesia. The nature and origin of that disease - and much else - are set out (presumably by myself, but that's where faith comes in, since I don't remember writing even yesterday's entry!) in files that are coded within this disc. Access to these files is controlled by series of riddles similar to, but harder than the riddle that opened this file. The need for 'burying' this information will become evident as you-I continue to access earlier files. As far the riddles themselves, it seems that ween in my amnesiac condition I have a knack for inventing doggerel riddles. God, I hope I don't end up discovering I'm a poet! I have, at this point, almost no memories of my adult life, though I do retain certain capabilities - such as flying some ships - and general knowledge. There is also a grab-bag of what I suppose are childhood memories - streets and rooms and cooking smells and a woman's voice softly urging me to go sleep. My mother's voice? I can remember watching Dumbo and wishing that I had his magic feather. I remember unwrapping a birthday present that had one box inside of another box inside of another box - but i can't remember what was in the last box. It's not safe for me to continue writing. You-I will find what you need to know on the earlier files. I have nothing substantive to add. I'll deposit this in the hotel's vault and use the password that's keyed to John I. None of the other riddles concern the Bible. I was able to guess the clues, so I guess you will, since I'm counting on you to be me. This is a weird situation.

I turned the computer off and left the store.

_Who am i?_ I asked myself inside my brain. That number flashed again 555-6200.

Maybe it was some info about me, time for Tiny Tokes.

I took the subway.  
After some time i stood there. I climbed the steps to the entrance portico. There was a doorbell on the wall with a plastic nameplate beside it. The nameplate read: _Tiny Tykes Talent Town_. I rang the doorbell, after a short wait the buzzer sounded. I entered and found myself at the foot of another flight of stairs. A voice called down, pipingly.

"Who's there?"

"John." I answered apathetically.

"Oh John, how nice. Mummy is in the bathtub, and I'm making imaginary cookies. I'll go tell her you're here."

I climbed the stairs to the second floor landing, where the door to apartment B was ajar. I entered a large loftlike space, in which the elements of a kitchen, a living room, and a toyshop were mingled in one bright-colored jumble. From another room, another voice called to me.

"I just got into the tub. Do be a dear, John, and read Cecily that nice book you got her. I won't be long." Something in my brain whispered, that I hate kids.

A moment later, from behind a room-dividing bookshelf, Cecily appeared with an aluminum cookie sheet full of imaginary cookies. She held out the cookie sheet and offered me a choice between an imaginary chocolate-chip cookie and an imaginary sprinkle cookie. I took the chocolate one.

"Thanks." I smiled.

Just then a woman's voice addressed me.

"John Cameron! This is a surprise." Who was this? Little book on table, the diary, answered that it was Ann.

I turned and saw a woman dressed in a blue bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her hair. She was beautiful with the beauty of the Ideal Housewife to be seen in ads for cooking oil and detergents. Ann began vigorously drying her hair with the bathtowel what was her turban. After it was all fluffed out into a great halo of damp blonde curls, she opened a cupboard compartment, and took out two brandy glasses and a bottle of brandy. The name somehow messed up now. The two of us drank a toast.

"Don't think, John Cameron, that what we started is still happening. You've had your chance. I'm after a long-term relationship. Not one where you pop up with a smile on your face, telling strange jokes about a hired doppleganger in a gilded cage, looking for a free dinner and a place to crash and then disappearing for a month. I'm not blaming you - you never pretended to be anything you're not." She continued.

"But you're a bum - a good-looking, personable sort of bum, but a bum for all that."

"Bum, huh? How sensible. Do you have anything to eat in here?"

"If you're hungry there's a big hunk of brie in the icebox. I carted it home from a party last night, so have all you want, it was free. Now excuse me a moment, I've got to put the little princess to bed. She's got a makeup call for a six a.m." She stopped and walked away with Cecily.

I went across the room to a corner that was predominantly kitcheny without quite becoming a kitchen, opened the icebox and encountered a truly mouth-watering wedge of brie gleaming in wrinkly plastic wrap. I took the brie and closed the door. The unwrapped brie, was too cold to release a really knockout aroma. I returned to the couch and consumed the entire piece of brie. Ann returned from putting Cecily to bed.

"John, you're a darling, and you know how fond I am of you, but you must accept the fact that as lovers we belong in the past tense. It's over, and I'm engaged to another man, as you very well know, and he is jealous of you, and I don't blame him, so you see, you must stop coming round here. In fact I'll have to ask you to leave now, since Jeff is coming over to watch an old Bergman movie on the Betamax." She said sadly.

"I'm sorry, I won't be bothering you ever again. I promise." I looked on her. Deja-vu.

"In one way I am glad you came, since it gives me an opportunity to give you this."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a note.

"Cecily found this under hall door this morning when she came back from her dance class. In the future, please have your mail left at another address. I'm not a forwarding service."

The note was in the form of a short hand-written letter.

_Dear John,  
I have no reason to suppose you'll ever remember your precious Ann when you've forgotten everything else in your past, but you always used to find your way back to her like some salmon returning to spawn, so I will go with my hunch and leave this note with her to pass on to you. Only to say this: I'm sorry I couldn't connect with you in some other fashion, but I was being watched every minute and it would not have been safe. That danger seems to be past now, and if you want to meet me again I will go each day around noon to the Tharis Historical Society at 77th Street and Park West and wait for you upstairs in the Neustadt Gallery. I'm sorry about what happened at the hotel, It was not my fault. I love you - and I apologize for doing so. I realize that for you my love only represents an inconvenience.  
Alice._

Ann went to the door and held it open, inviting my departure with a bittersweet smile. I accepted her invitation, and left the apartment.  
When the door closed i whispered to myself.

"Good-bye... Julia..."

Again with the help of subway i entered my home, the tenement and slept dreaming about the purple angel.

* * *

A/N: In the time the story takes place,are CDs more like floppy discs now in 2006, used for storing small files. Mini versions are most used. I think. 


	3. Companera

_He who doesn't fear death dies only once. -- Laughing bull_

_A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body. -- André Maurois_

_If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive. -- Spike Spiegel_

-

Lying, lying on cold floor, cold stairs, hands full of blood.  
Soon the time will stop, in the middle of scarlet bath.  
Earth path have its hidden purpose. My drew by shining blade.  
Mysterious hand of someone invisible above, is extinguishing the star of my living.  
Slowly, the matter is vanishing from packet and earth will accept the body back.  
Only my own mulishness kept me alive till this moment.

Saw it, saw it.  
Saw the light.

And then, Spike Spiegel died...

-

Then piece of ceiling, what fell on my head, woke me up.  
There was no time to reflect nonsense dreams, so I set on path.

-

The gravitate facade of the Tharis Historical Society stretched from 76th to 77th St. in a single crisp classical gestalt. Ionic columns rose from a fortress-like base, at the center of which the museum's small entry looked like an afterthought, as though the architect only reluctantly had conceded the possibility that people might go in and out. Inside the revolving door there was a desk, where a large sing informed me of the admission charges. The ticket agent looked up inquiringly from the paper back he was reading and said.

"Would you like a ticket, Sir?"

I agreed, he took my money, and torn ticket in half, putting it in a box by his side. I saw a large free-standing bulletin board which showed me the maps of each floor of the museum. There was a special exhibition of 19th century portraits of famous Earth artists in the first floor galleries to the north and south. Ahead of me to the west was a broad double-staircase mounting to the second floor. I went up the staircase, which took a ninety-degree twist to the left on the way. The second floor was to the east. I entered the gallery devoted to the Neustandt Collection of Tiffany lamps. I began to feel as i did on entering the sauna, a giddiness and trembling, a sense of my mind speeding away from my will's control with a purpose all its own. But i didn't faint. I just stood there spellbound, until i heard, close at hand, a voice that whispered.

"John, darling John." I turned around. It was Alice.

"Do you remember the first time that I brought you here?" She asked me.

"No, I can't remember anything." I answered.

"We kissed beside this very lamp that you've been standing here staring at so long. And the vow we swore."

She placed her hands, gently, on my shoulders, and tilted her head back, closing her eyes as she did so. She waited for my kiss. I kissed her and she yielded to my lips.

"Does that mean what I hope it does?" She asked me when she has caught her breath.

"Will you marry me now?"

But all that was just my hormones.

"No."

If looks could kill, the Neustadt Collection would just had acquired a corpse.

"Damn you, John. I guess you're too confused to think straight. Let's talk it out. Ask me what you need to know." She then said.

"Who is Spike Spiegel?" I asked question what rang in my head for some time now.

"Maybe Spike Spiegel is only a role you've played, one among many - though I doubt that any of your other roles paid so well. It all started a year ago when some guy got busted for drugs. You wanted to start a new life when you 'died'. So between the bust and his trial, while he was out on bail, he contacted you and got you to agree to go down there and stand trial for him - and serve his time, if you had to." She continued.

"You took his place, and got sentenced to five years at Earth's prison. Your physical resemblance must have been uncanny, but I've never laid eyes on him." I didn't remember anything.

"As soon as you went to prison, he had to go into hiding, and then, when you escaped, killing a guard in the process he was in a fix. And very pissed off with you, I would think. Anyhow now you know as much as I do about it. And you may appreciate a little better the wisdom of emigrating to Ganymede. How about it? Does a fishing look more appealing now?" She finished.

"I hate fish." I answered.

"Well, John, you cannot blame a girl for trying." Said Alice, as tears began to well up the recesses of her eyes.

"What happened in the prison?" But i was too concerned on my past.

"First you were busted for drugs, now you're wanted for murder! That's the real reason for going to Ganymede. I can't tell you any more about your escape or the guard you killed. Anyhow by the time we met you only had a couple of memories left from that time. Something about a bowl of chili with a dead tarantula in it." She finished and i remembered that dream.

"Do you know Ann?" I asked again.

"I don't know the woman from Eve. I found a letter she'd written to you once inside a desk drawer. I remember the name on the letterhead. Out of jealousy, I suppose. When we parted company in the chapel, I left notes for you everywhere I could think that you might show up. And the one I left with Ann was the one that got through."

"What about the hotel?" I continued.

"The Sunderland is where you've been staying. We are supposed to get married there one of these days, you know."

"That 'Luke' figure is your father?"

"He isn't. I guess you sensed that, didn't you? I don't know that much more about him - and I don't want to. The shotgun wedding scenario was all his idea." She started again.

"He said that with your amnesia getting worse every day that only an overt threat would get you moving. I was reluctant, but I went along with the idea for your sake, John. You've got to believe that." Alice made that look again.

"Who the hell is 'John'!" I shouted from anger with repeating of that name.

"Sorry, I cannot tell you anything about that." Alice shook her head.

_That woman, Ann, why I said that?_

"Who is Julia?"

Alice ignored my question and gave me a cutting look.

"All these questions, questions, questions are getting us nowhere. You really never loved anyone but..."

She hesitated and then smiled.

"...Julia. Good-bye and good riddance!" There were tears in her eyes as she turned and left the hall.

_But that is a lie._

I left the museum.

"Hey there, you in the white tux. Come here!" A voice hailed me.

I looked about to see who called out to me, and saw a young man seated on the curb, who gestured for me to come nearer. He was wearing the classic uniform of a bohemian - blue jeans, a black leather jacket, and a black beret. His goatee matched his clothes. There was a sketchpad propped against the back of the bench, with a sing carefully handlettered on the page turned open to view.

_Your portrait in charcoal._

The young man saw me reading his sing and smiled.

"I like that white suit. It's classic." He held out his hand to greet me.

"My name's Tony." He said.

"I'm... John." I responded to his invitation with a cautions handshake. He didn't seem to mind my reticence, for he asked.

"Want to have your portrait drawn?"

"Uh, why not?" I answered his invitation.

"Great! Just take a seat here on the bench, and I'll be done in a jiffy."

I sat on the bench, and Tony began his sketch. He worked quickly, keeping up a steady stream of chatter all the while concerning the fascination of my white tuxedo. In a few minutes he finished the sketch and handed it to me to look at. It was evident from his careful rendering of my tuxedo and much-erased blur of my face that Tony's interest really concentrated on my clothes and not on the person wearing them. Tony apologized for the poor likeness, and explained that his real ambition is to be a fashion designer.

"I guess I'm just not cut out for this sort of work. Almost everyone who sits for a portrait decides not to buy it once they see it. Can you draw a good likeness?" He asked all of a sudden

"I don't know." I told him quite honestly.

"Here, try it. Draw me." He said handing me a stick of charcoal and a kneaded eraser.

I finished my attempt to draw Tony, and he looked at my work.

"That's okay. It's better than my stuff." He admitted.

"I'll tell you what. I got a proposition."

"I got few woolongs so far doing this. I'll give you hundred, plus this sketchpad, and the charcoal, and the clothes I got on, if you'll let me have that white tux. We're about the same size. I know a place in the park where we can switch clothes without anyone seeing. What do you say?"

"Sounds good." I already got tired from that dress.

"Ok, follow me."

After some distance, i came to a part of Park, where Tony judged it to will be safe to change. He stepped behind a thick strand of bushes and began to take off his clothes.

"Come on, Strip!" He said.

I stepped behind the bushes and hesitated. I felt embarrassed.

"Hey, come on. Save the blushes till later." Tony urged.

I pulled off my pants, and a momentary flash of memory tingled my mind as the breeze tingled the bare skin of my legs. I saw myself standing in a room. I'm changing personalities, names, lives, just as easily as i stood in Park and changed my clothes. I was in a tiny apartment, but since it took no space to change into else its size was of no importance. Alice stood there with me, smiling. And then the memory was gone like the breeze what brought it. I and Tony stepped out from behind the bushes, in the white tuxedo he looked like a shy usher at a stranger's wedding.

"Go down to the park at Delta Square in the village and draw there. You should have good business at the park, and the police will not bother you." Tony said good-bye.

I made my way into that Delta Square park.  
It was a sunny day, and park was full of people. Some sat in groups on the rim of the central waterless fountain, some played a conceptual version of volleyball without a net. There were dog-walkers and girl-watchers, rollerskaters and derelicts in various stages of disintegration. The paths were full of strollers, and the benches packed with people eating hotdogs or reading newspapers or talking to each other. One corner of the park was given over to chess-players, and nearby a man with a sketchpad just like mine was completing a sketch of a woman. When he was done, she paid him and took the sketch. Then they left in opposite directions, leaving the bench they'd occupied up for grabs. I sat at the empty bench and opened the sketchpad to the page bearing the hand-lettered sing. I propped the sketchpad against the back of the bench, assumed an artistic expression, and waited for a fish to take the bait. A few people glanced my sing as they passed by, but none even slowed down. Finally someone appeared interested. A pair of teenagers, one blonde, the other brunette, came to a halt some few feet from the bench and conferred in whisper.

"Can we see one of your sketches?"

I showed them the sketch of Tony i did earlier, and they conferred again. The brunette seemed eager to have me do her portrait, but she had not enough money. Reluctantly her friend loaned her few woolongs.

"Okay." the brunette said, and sat down stiffly on the edge of the bench to pose.

"But if I don't like it, I don't have to buy it. Okay?" I nodded my acquiescence.

"Should I smile?" She asked.

"No." I said and she complied with a nod, and slowly her face relaxed into an expression of dreamy tranquility. It was the face of an angel.

I rapidly sketched the brunette's angelic face, capturing the essence of her dreamy beauty. The result was somewhere between Raphael and a very expensive Valentine's Day card. I finished the drawing with a flourish, and she asked to see it. She reacted to her portrait with an exclamation of pleasure.

"It's wonderful! It looks just like me, doesn't it, Jill?" The blonde took the sketch.

"Not bad." She conceded grudgingly. I asked for my money and got it with a tip besides.

"Thank you so much. I'm going to have it framed and give it to my fiance for his birthday." Brunette said.

"You're welcome..."

Two girls left me and i remained on the bench, glowed with a sense of professional accomplishment.

_Maybe i was a painter... yeah right._  
I waited again.

Finally one of the denizens of Delta Square paused before my bench to ponder at my sing. He was about forty years old, and about many pounds overweight, and he was dressed like Roy Rogers. His cowboy hat alone must have cost decent sum of woolongs and the deaths of a large family of rabbits.

"Howdy. Think you could do MY portrait, pardner?" He said. I thought all cowboys died.

"Of course, thats why I'm here." I replied.

The urban cowboy took a seat at the other end of the bench and adjusted the brim of his hat.

"Ya want to have me lookin' right at ya, pardner, or ya want my profile?" He asked.

"Look straight at me."

He faced me and assumed a poker-faced expression.  
I decided to draw him warts and all. I tried to make the broad curve of his chin a graceful curve that complemented the curve of his Stetson - though it was no compliment to him. I finished the drawing and he asked to see it. His first reaction to my portrait was ill-concealed dismay, but then he took the sketchpad to study it more carefully.

"Well, pardner, I could wish I had a different shape of chin, but I reckon that's my own lookout. The drawin' itself ain't half bad. Here."

He peeled off a few woolong bills from a thick roll.

"Keep the change. Ya look like you can use it." He took the sketch and walked off, fingering his flabby chin with a thoughtful expression.

I waited long three hours until some other customer appeared.

"You do pore-traits?"

A twangy voice inquired, rousing me from a half-doze. I looked up into the wizened face of a man wearing a tarboosh-style hat with the emblem of the Fraternal order of Shrines and his hometown embroidered on it. He was dressed in a bright plaid jacket and red Bermuda shorts, and the name on badge on the lapel of his jacket said. _'Hi My Name Is Bud!'_.

"Yes i do." I assured him. And he took a seat on the bench.

"Well, I could use the rest," he said with a sigh. "I tied one last night. You Tharis people sure know how to have a good time. Well, what are you waiting for - do my pore-trait."

I began to do his portrait but only set down the first few lines defying the volumes of his head when his eyes slowly dropped closed and he began to quietly snore. His head remained erect, and i was able to continue drawing him. The wrinkles presented an interesting technical problem, but i managed to render them realistically without making him look like a giant prune. The result was a good drawing but rather comical in its effect. As i putted the finishing touches, he woke up, blinked away in confusion, and asked to see what i done.

"Why, it looks just like me!" he said admiringly. "Maybe you went a bit overboard on the wrinkles, but you did the eyes just the way they were! Here's your money."

He took it from his wallet and gave it to me in exchange for the rolled-up sketch.

"Thank you young fella, this will make a fine souvenir of Tharis." He said as he left the park.

While i was waiting for another customer, i became aware that i was being scrutinized intently by a woman standing some twenty feet away. She came closer. I smiled, and that seemed to stop her in her tracks.

"Hello." I said and she smiled uncertainly and came a few steps nearer the bench.

"You... draw portraits?" She asked in the tone of voice of someone first arriving at Oz.

"Of course." I said, already well placed in my new job.

She sat at the other end of the bench and regarded me wonderingly.

"Very well, then draw me. I will sit here and not say a word." She took off the camera what she carried by a strap round her neck and placed it beside her.

I opened the sketchpad to a fresh sheet and took the stick of charcoal in my right hand. I noticed that my hand was trembling, and that my forehead broke out in a cold sweat. I looked at the woman before me and felt an indescribable sweetness. I placed each line upon the paper as carefully as if my life depended on it, as if it were a tightrope on which i was balancing above an abyss. Slowly a likeness formed upon the sheet of paper. But it was no more than that, an amateurish scrawl, and the wild hope that first inspired me, began to fade - the hope that she will see in what i drew the same pale reflection of these extraordinary feelings, this wonderful sweetness that could be, i realized, described - by a single word. The stick of charcoal snapped in my fingers, and i dropped the pad and the charcoal, and at that moment she burst into tears.

"Spike!" She cried aloud.

"It is you! It is! Oh, Spike, I thought you'd left me. I thought you were dead. But you're alive!"

"What's your name?" I asked her, because of amnesia.

"My name?" Her delight clouded with bewilderment.

"It's same name it's always been, Faye Valentine! You don't suppose that I'd married since... you went away. Where have you been, Spike? Why didn't you call? I've been so worried. And seeing you like this, drawing portraits on the street. I don't understand." She said.

"Me neither. Since some time I'm not able to remember anything, nothing. Just scraps from my childhood. Like if someone took away my memories... I have, amnesia." She was astonished, but not skeptical.

"So you reached your goal, you forgot your past..." She stood up decisively from the bench and slang her camera back around her neck.

"We'll go to the place I've sublet on Gramercy Park. It's only a studio, I'm afraid, and you'll have to sleep on a sofa. But that's nothing new for you. It's so strange having to explain all this to you. When I think of all the times that we --" She broke off, blushing, and then laughed aloud.

"But I'm so happy! Come on --" She held her hand out to me.

"Let's stroll back to my place."

She took my hand and led me from the square. On the way to Gramercy Park Faye, dismissed all my questions by her kisses.

"What's so wonderful, is that you've fallen in love with me at second sight - for second time!"

I entered the lobby of a small apartment building identified by its canvas canopy as the Noblese. I was introduced to the doorman as a houseguest who was to be admitted into building at any time. In the elevator going up to her fifth floor apartment my rediscovered beloved re-introduced herself affectionately. She was Faye Valentine; single, age 24, a former bounty hunter now a fashion photographer by profession, and a woman madly in love with a mysterious stranger, me. The elevator arrived at 5, and Faye led the way to Apartment 5E, unlocked the door, opened and stood aside for me to enter. I entered the apartment and Faye followed me inside.

"Welcome. Now, why don't you sit down and ask all those questions you're obviously bursting with. But first, do you want a drink?" She asked then.

"Why not?" Meanwhile i tried hard to remember.

"I can't offer more than a glass of wine, I'm afraid." Faye said as she got out a bottle of wine and two wine glasses. She gave me one of the glasses.

The two of us drank the wine, and Faye disposed of the two dirty glasses when i was through.

"I hope the place doesn't give you claustrophobia. It costs five thousand a month to sublet, and for this neighborhood, that's a bargain. But it is small for two people."

I spent a quite a while talking with this woman named Faye - learning who she really was, and learning how much i meant to her. When I looked at the time, it was after nine p.m.

"Do you know any John Cameron III?" I asked.

"I don't know anything about him." She replied.

"Who am I? Am i that Spike, who is he? What was he like?" I was desperate.

"I could tell you many things about the man, and he went by the name of Spike Spiegel, but I never learned very much about the life history of Spike Spiegel. You were stubborn, idiotic, asshole and imbecile. But quite a good guy." She then said.

She walked over to bed.  
Impulsively i kissed Faye, and she responded like a dam bursting. Her fingers clawed my back, tangled my hair, and touched all my buttons. Her arms slipped around my body. Our tongues took taste tests of each other's flesh. The temperature arose, the beat accelerated, and one thing led to another.

-

Faye declared that she must be early the next day for work. After we each had a shower, we went to bed together on the unfolded sofa and were soon asleep.

When i woke up, i found Faye almost ready to depart for the day.  
She announced that it was time for her to go to work, and that she'll be back around six. She gave me a kiss on her way out the door, then left.

I looked around the room...

"Thank heaven," Faye said, bursting into the room breathlessly.

"I thought of this before I got out of the lobby - you might come down with a recurrence of your damned amnesia. And if you do, I don't want you to disappear again. So roll up your sleeve, please. This won't hurt, I promise."

"What the hell are you doing Faye?"

With a felt-tip maker Faye wrote her telephone number in large letters on my left wrist: 555-0042.

"I've gotten this ink on my hands by accident a couple of times and it's nearly impossible to wash off. So here you are, tattooed with your lady's phone number! How's that for romantic!" Faye promised not to surprise me again, then closed the door behind her on her way to work.

I looked around once again.  
Faye's apartment represented, spatially, the Minimum Daily Requirement for a civilized life. The single large window closed, and was shaded by the blinds which were also closed. The kitchenette in the far corner, equipped with a small refrigerator surmounted by a microwave oven. In the same corner was a round glass top table with two ice-cream parlor chairs. The table clearly doubled as a desk, for it was strewed with letters, bills and contact sheets, just as the sofa doubled as bed when it folded out. There was a large walk-in closet facing the entrance of the apartment, its door partly ajar, and another door to the left of that: the bathroom, but most notable piece of furniture on the room was a baby grand piano, its gleaming ebony lid raised high. The whine in my stomach led me over in the kitchen. I looked inside the fridge and found, in the freezer, what seemed like a year's supply of frozen grommet foods. Each packaged in its own microwavable dish. Expensive but convenient. Faye wasn't there, so i didn't have to worry about her. I looked at all of the choices before me, and saw Veal Chasseour, Duck a L'Orange, Chicken Veronique, Escargots au Beurre, and Quiche Lorraine. Duck was it. I took my meal out of the icebox, read the cooking instructions, popped it in the microwave, took it out and dig up some plastic silverware. Somewhere under a thin slice of orange and on top of the bed of rice was supposed to be a boneless breast of duck. And there it was! I sliced it into two mouthfuls to make it last. I enjoyed the meal thoroughly. When i was done, the dishes and utensils went in the garbage. Ecologically unsounded but undeniably convenient.

I turned on the TV. I flipped through the channels on the TV, but found nothing appealing during the daytime hours. Frustrated, i turned the TV off. I turned on the radio. I was listening to WQXR FM. At the moment they were playing a piece by Mozart. I turned it off. Boredom appeared. I started to examine random things in her apartment. The dresser was from deep rosewood. There was a clock radio what i turned off moment ago, a framed picture and a telephone on top. The photo showed me, in evening clothes standing before a wall from which the patterned paper was peeling. The contrast between my perfect formal attire and the dismal wallpaper was striking. Then i recognized the pattern of the wallpaper. I saw those pea-green rosettes and khaki-colored leaves before. It was the hallway of the tenement where i slept and dreamt the dream that faded from my memory till this moment.

_Remember dammit!_

_Its no use..._

I took a seat at the piano and placed my hands on the keyboard. I let my mind go blank, and then like water rising from some deep artesian spring the music welled from me, filling the small apartment with a soaring melody. Again i turned the chair and watched the ceiling. Boring. I laid at sofa and took a restful nap. It reminded me something, something about ceiling fan, nevermind. In that i must have fell asleep.

Faye entered the apartment with a Macy's shopping bag, inside of which was a box.

"I got you something new. I just couldn't stand seeing you wearing that old black leather jacket any longer. And I also thought, what if today's his birthday? You can't be sure it isn't after all. Go ahead, open it."

"What's wrong about my outfit. I feel good in it." I asked myself when i was opening the box.

In the box was a black leather jacket. With a Ralph Lauren label. Faye looked dismayed.

"Shit, I told Ned to get anything BUT a black jacket. He must have misheard me." She blushed.

"Ned's my assistant, and he loves to shop for clothes, so I sent him to Macy's with the shopping list."

"I'll take it back and get you something else."

"Whatever..." I gave her the box back and she put it and the Macy's bag away.

Next day she filled a nylon bag with camera equipment, apologized for having me alone.

"I'll be back as soon as i can, probably around six."

Again i leeched around all day, waiting for her to return.

Faye came home with a package from Woolworth's. She didn't let me see what it was till after dinner, which i delegated to select and prepare from choices available in the freezer. After dinner, Faye banished me into the bathroom for five minutes, and when i came out, i found that she spread the pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle over the glass-topped table.

"You used to love to do jig-saws, and you said it was because they put you into a kind of trance state. This is a 2000 piece set that we've worked on once on the ship." She explained.

"Yeah... they kept me awake..." I mumbled to myself.

"But don't look at the picture on the box. My idea was that you might stir some of your buried memories by our working it together again. Do you want to try it?"

"Its worth the try." I said in a little worried voice.

With Faye's help, i turned all pieces right-side up, sorting out the edge pieces, and joining those together first. At the moment the frame was complete, i suddenly was able to envision the completed jigsaw and i described it in detail to Faye:

"There are rowboats in the foreground clustered round a dock; the dark rippled water of a harbor or moat, and beyond the water a square-towered castle that must be somewhere on Earth in Europe, since it seems the genuine medieval article, and a great quantity of cloudless blue sky." Very heart breaking for me.

Faye showed me the picture on the box, and it was all there just as i described it. I continued working on the puzzle till well past midnight, and though i found it a pleasant pastime, i uncovered no further buried memories. I laid on the bed and dreamt about jigsaw puzzle. Puzzle called Who am I? Puzzle with blank pieces, which are slowly getting together.

-

_To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. -- Jet Black_

-

_Am I dead?_


	4. Bird spread its wings

_

* * *

_

_If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. --E. Joseph Cossman_

_Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? --Laughing Bull_

_If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow. --Spike Spiegel_

_Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure"  
is not the falling down, but the staying down. --Faye Valentine_

-

"Bang..."

"Saw it, saw it. Saw the light."

"And then Spike Spiegel died..."

"Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, 'More light.' Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light."

"I saw that light."

"I screwed it up..."

"Died after fight with Vicious?"

"Nah, I was death long before, she killed me, you know, broke my heart..."

"But now its up to you, my dear self, to clean the things, to get the shape."

"And fail again..."

-

I woke up to the absolutely quiet apartment. _What a dream..._ I said to myself.  
The thing so annoying to woke me up, was the telephone. I took the phone in my hand.

"Spike, I've discovered a clue! But... uh..." Faye said excitedly, excitement vanished at the second sentence.

"But what?"

"Do you know that picture of you that's, on the dresser, the one with you in trench-coat in abandoned building? You were pretty angry when i took the photo. Then you looked sad again hands in pockets. On my way to work i found that coat, drenched in blood just before the tenement, searched through the pockets and found a piece of paper with phone number belonging to..."

"Who? Whose number is it." I asked trying to dig as much as I could about trench-coat.

"Julia." She took a very decent pause.

"The number is 555-5413." I wrote it down and line got dead. _Huh?_

My fingers got sweaty. _Some of my buried memories. 5, Julia, 5, why is that name, 5, still deep inside of me,-5413._

The phone was answered at the third ring by a woman with an agreeable, well known voice, what said.

"Hello, Mrs. Spiegel here."

I was momentarily at loss for words, and the woman asked.

"Who is this?"

"Spike..." I said.

The voice gasped as if I had just repeated her darkest secret. In the briefest of moments, she recovered.

"I must see you at once, there's much to explain, but you can't come here right now. The servants would recognize you, and they'll probably call the police. Wait a half-hour, and I'll give the servants a few hours off. You'll find me at the Dakota on the corner of Park West and 72nd street. Tell the guard at the door you want to see Colby. Do you need money?"

"Yes." I said somehow uninterested.

"I'll bring what I can scrape together in the house. A thousand anyhow. Do hurry! I'm glad to hear your voice, take care." She hanged up before I could get in another word. I laid the receiver.

My path there took thirty minutes.

There was the Dakota, a nine-story jumble of dirty yellow brick, trimmed with dirtier terra cotta. The trim was black in the steeply gabled upper stories, tan at street level. Hell could not have a less inviting entrance than great gate house on 72nd Street, where elderly uniformed guard regarded me distrustfully. The subway entrance here was closed. A sing directed me to another entrance at 71st. Where I came from. I walked into the gatehouse.

"Stop right there," The guard advised me, as I stepped into the shadow of the tunnel entrance. "Visitors have to be announced. Who are you here to see?"

"Colby." I answered the name from the phone call.

"And your name?"

"Spiegel." I replied to his question.

The guard darted into a kind of a sentry box, where I could see him speaking on a phone. He returned and grudgingly let me enter the Dakota.

"Its Apartment 44." He said and gave me directions.

I crossed the inner courtyard to the building's northeast tower-block, and after waiting for an elevator that clicked and buzzed but never arrived, I mounted a long staircase. By the time I reached the third floor, I was breathing hard. I paused beside the open doorway of a vacant apartment that someone painted, then continued up to the fourth floor when I've caught my breath. I entered apartment 44. Before me was a Chinese table supporting a large yellow ginger jar. To my right was a partly opened double doorway from which bright light spilled into the hallway. To my left was another door. I took right. I was in a room decorated with money - not in its raw form, but in fabric and wood equivalents. A few spindly antique chairs were aswim on a swirling sea of Persian carpeting. The wood-paneled walls were a hymn to money declaring itself spent, and four chandeliers hanged from the ceiling with the same purpose in mind. All sense of individuality or personality was scrupulously avoided. A bank lobby could not be more completely consecrated to its own inordinate expense. Through a doorway concealed in the wood paneling a woman entered the room.

"Spike," She said. "My husband! At last we meet. You look quite well."

I looked at the woman who said she was my wife. She was beautiful, there was no getting around the fact. It was a beautiful that had nothing to do with character. It was not her eyes, or grace, or warmth. She was beautiful the way the sky is blue or blood is red. She reached into the concealed bar and pulled out a small, sleek automatic pistol which she pointed at the center of my chest. Smiling she said.

"So my dear husband, we're together again. It's so nice of you to drop over like this when we'd lost all track of you and just didn't know where to look. I've invited a few people to help us celebrate our reunion. Sit back and relax while we wait for them."

"Shit..." I mumbled to myself and sat.

"First, of course, there are the other women in your life. Alison, your ex-servant. Tell me, why didn't you marry the poor pathetic creature?"

"Huh?" I didn't know _who_ Alison was.

"I told her you would never go along with her ridiculous scheme - but I hoped you might, since otherwise how were we to get around killing you? She does love you in her own misguided way." _Could she mean..._

"Alison was the one who - at least temporarily - convinced us that rather than murder you, we should let you go to Ganymede as Mr. and Mrs. Cameron. That's why we put on our little drama at the Sunderland." She cut me off my thoughts.

"Since we failed to convince you, of course, we've had to return to our first plan, which is to kill you and pass it off as suicide."

I felt nothing in my heart, but Alice said I loved this woman.  
_Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her?  
If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?_

"Then, of course, there is your bounty hunter bitch - Faye, I believe her name is. I haven't invited her yet, but I think we should have her here,  
don't you? Tell me, do you love her?"

But then when she said bitch, I almost laughed.

"Maybe..."

"Then you should be able, having loved at least once in your life, to face death with equanimity. Even nobility. So I've read. I couldn't tell you from personal experience."

She finished her martini, and looked up with an expression of polite interest, as though she were working at the information booth of a good department store.

"Would you like to pour some more drinks?" She asked.

_Thats it!  
Way out.  
Get her drunk, run away._

"Yeah..."

"Oh yes, I'm an alcoholic. Alcoholics usually deny they're alcoholics, but I freely admit it."

_Even better._

"Getting back to our party, the third guest is Luke, whom I'm sure you remember. He's a dreadfully coarse man and I've made it clear that I will not have anything to do with him once we've completed our undertaking - to prepare you, dear one, for the undertaker."

_Shit, I forgot about the others._

"We thought he'd accomplished that little task back at the chapel in the Sunderland. But in any event, I'm sure we'll relish the opportunity to try again."

"So tell me, how did you get my number?"

"Faye told me."

Another plan formed in my mind.  
I decided that perhaps telling Julia what she wanted to know would give me an opportunity to find some point of weakness, some detail I could use to persuade her that my murder wasn't necessary after all. I launched into the tale of my amnesial awakening at the Sunderland. She listened to my tale with growing impatience, and finally interrupted:

"That's all very fascinating, I'm sure, and it will make for an unusual autobiography. But tell it to your ghostwriter."

"Personally, I'm skeptical about your case. It seems so convenient. There are days when I'd like nothing better than to erase my past. But I must make do with this." She glanced down at her martini glass. Refilled it and looked admiringly around the expensive room.

"You really set me up in style and I thank you."

"You're welcome...?"

"You once said to me that my life seemed 'frivolous'. I think you meant that I didn't have a job. I still don't, and I don't want one. Why should I?  
I have all the money I need, thanks to your unwitting generosity."

"The Dakota is a good address, through of course it's on the wrong side of the park. With what I can save by living here I can afford my little condo at Vail. It would be nice never to have to budget, but on the whole I can't complain." She took a sip of her martini and commented, "Most people fear too much vermouth, but I believe in a four-to-one ratio. Otherwise one might as well drink raw gin. Would you like another?"

"Everybody should believe in something... I believe I'll have another..."

I thought there was no chance, but I wanted at least know what happened in that prison.

"So what happened, my memory is little screwed." I asked when I put it all together.

"Poor darling. You look really confused."

"You really don't remember a thing, do you? Well, it's a familiar tale. Boy meets girl, boy woos girl, girl says yes, boy throws over girl. There,  
however, our tale took a twist, since at the time you announced to me that Faye had taken over my position as your lover, you were officially in prison."

"Meaning Zane was. You were paying him some outrageous price to serve your time on a drug bust while you were enjoying yourself as John Cameron. When you gave me my walking papers, I packed my bag, flew down to Texas, and got married to my convict fiance. Zane was delighted to go along with the joke. After all, he was allowed a week's conjugal privileges."

"I might add that he was great in the sack, although that wouldn't concern you."

"I've wondered myself at what point Zane decided to escape. If he'd broken out before I flew down there and we got married, he could have returned to being himself, the police would have been looking for Spike Spiegel, and you'd never have been able to resume your real identity or inherit the Spiegel's fortune."

Something inside me laughed again.

"Fortune, probably the change..." I said, but she took no pause in her monologue.

"But then I showed up, and we struck our deal. If I became Mrs. Spiegel, I could inherit as your next-of-kin. That's assuming, of course, that you'd be dead. Zane felt it'd be easy to manage your 'suicide'. After he escaped we tracked you down through Alison, who was helping you while you were hiding." Then again, the fortune was her plan.

"Can you imagine the expression on her face when she opened the door and saw Zane and I standing there, with Luke leering behind us like some malnourished vulture?"

"..." I was speechless.

"You were off gallivanting around the city, and before you got home - fortunately for you - Alison persuaded us that, thanks to your convenient amnesial condition, she could not only solve our problem of the two Spike Spiegels, but provide us an even larger fortune in the process." _Was I rich or something?_

"She would acquire from you the formula for your Texas-style wonder-drug, which she would in turn pass along to us. She would persuade you to marry her, and, as Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, the two of you would cruise of our lives into the Ganymede sunset. And we - I - would persuade Luke and Zane to let you go."

"The poor thing thought she'd have you docile as a lamb in three or four days. After four weeks, you not only didn't know the formula for the drug, you still refused to marry her and exit gracefully, even when Luke threatened you at the hotel."

Julia fell silent for a moment and stared into her martini glass intently, as though it were a cup of tea-leaves with my fortune in it.

"Sometimes I do reproach myself for having taken the side of the bad guys in all this. You're obviously a NICER person than Zane, and usually as good or better a lay. My only excuse is self-interest."

"And I truly didn't want to have to kill you. The logic is, the situation simply requires it. Once Zane killed that guard during the escape, and Alison's plan failed, there were no other options."

"So I'm already in state of decay." Part of me wanted to laugh again.

"Another drink?" Julia asked once more.

I held my glass before her. She poured what was left of the martinis into the two glasses, and emptied her own glass with a gulp and a wince. I followed suit and drank my own.

"Now then, let's proceed to business."

"What the hell do you want? It seems much bigger than some fortune I don't have." I asked.

"We want the disc you stored in the strongbox at the Sunderland Hotel, and your help in reading it. We assume that on it, under various layers of your amnesial ponderings, we'll find the formula of the drug that caused your amnesia."

"What?"

"And what a wonder drug it is. Its commercial potentials are staggering. Think what it could do for prison reform. Or for victims of abuse or accidents."

My head started to pound.

"But I keep saying 'we' - and you don't yet know who 'we' all are. Let me introduce you, then, to an old friend you may have forgotten." She raised her voice: "Zane, you may come in now."

A man entered the room; I turned to look into the face of Zane Bester. I started to sweat, my heart raced. It was like looking into a mirror. He had his hair styled exactly like mine. His skin could be a shade paler, and his chin a bit slacker, but otherwise we might be identical twins. The crucial difference between the two of us at this moment, however, was the expression on our faces. His was a look of cruel amusement; mine, (though I couldn't see it, I could feel it in the form of trickles of sweat) a look of fear. Suddenly Zane tensed, my discomfort banished from his mind.

"Somebody's outside!"

"Its just Luke," Julia told him.

"No, its not. He went to the Sunderland to wait for Spiegel. Besides, that's not his walk, I can hear it isn't him."

He pulled a wicked-looking pistol from his waistband and opened the door of the room. After glancing down the hallway, ready to fire at the slightest sound or movement, he crossed to unlock the door on the other side. To his surprise, it was already unlocked. Julia called out to him, "Be careful Zane," but it was more the voice of a cautious supervisor than a concerned friend. He ignored her, crept into the room across the hall like a spider that sensed it trapped a fly, vanishing from my view as he closed the door behind him. _BANG! BANG!_ The sound of gunfire was followed by that of breaking glass and crashing furniture. Julia's face paled, and she ran for the concealed door, her hidden catch. Her hands clumsily opened the door. I heard the _'click'_ as she locked the door behind her. I was quite alone in the room. I saw no sing of Zane across the hall although various thumps and rustling noises continued to come from the room. I succeed, she was drunk, unable to guard me. This was my chance. I dashed out of the room, through the hallway, out the front door and down the steep stairs, running so fast as to risk disaster but certain that to hesitate held greater danger still. The guard at the entrance called out to me as I ran by, but made no move to stop me. Crossing the street into the park, I took a succession of paths, trying to turn randomly to frustrate any followers, then collapse to rest for a moment behind the trunk of a large tree. No one followed me. With an air of exultation I realized that I was close to solving the riddle of my amnesia. Julia's exclamation filled most of the gaps in my memory; now I could tell Faye what really happened and together the two of us could formulate a plan.

I took subway again and entered the house where Faye lived. I entered the lobby. The doorman nodded as I entered, allowing me to go into the building. I entered the elevator, pressed the button for 5, and entered Apartment 5E. I ate the tasty chicken, its grapes looked pretty, but the sauce hadn't managed to introduce them to each other. I ate it and threw away the leftovers. Faye didn't come. I waited, checking the clock every minute, then second. In that waiting, I rediscovered the hidden smoker in me and smoked one deck of Lucky strikes. _My lucky charm..._ Then at 0:54am I settled into a lonely and fitful sleep. I remembered she said something about photographer work. Next day I woke up, Faye was not there. I sat. Suddenly phone came to life, I took the earphone to welcome Faye's voice.

"Ah, there you are. I must congratulate you, Spike, on your clever escape from our little party at the Dakota." My heart fell as I recognized Julia's voice.

"Your ingenuity has forced us to become more inventive, even aggressive in our plans. Fortunately, your friend Miss Valentine has a listed number."

"Nice try, but you'll never find her." I cradled the hope.

"Let's get down to business. Luke returned from waiting for you at the Sunderland and was kind enough, after I made a couple of phone calls and determined the correct location, to pick up Faye for us and bring her over here to wait for you."

"..." At the thought of Faye being touched by Luke or Zane, my fists clenched involuntarily and angry tears came to my eyes.

Julia interpreted my silence correctly.

"You're thinking about her being in the same room with such men of... I suppose 'action' is the best euphemism I can summon at the moment. It is an interesting thought."

"If you bring the disc here, to the Dakota, between eight and noon tomorrow, we'll let the two of you go off to Australia just as Alison had planned and you can live happily ever after. If not, Zane and Luke will proceed with their own plans, and my ability to restrain them will be gone. Am I quite clear?"

"Well, if you're gonna 'do' something to her, I will torn your guts open and spread them all over the Tharis. Then I will laugh into your face until you die."

"Your attitude may be different once Zane and Luke have dealt with Miss Valentine."

"Shut up!" I shouted when she hanged up.

I waited, tried to put it together. Then my eyes focused onto some familiar object lying on chair where I missed it yesterday. An old trench-coat, drenched in blood here and there, full of holes and memories. That helped me choose. Its choice, not chance that determinate the destiny. I chose to surprise them, I searched the flat and found Faye's Glock. It could come in handy. I was already walking out, when it started to rain, I came back and took the old trench coat. Then I was scared, first time I was afraid, after I left the hotel. Scared of thought that she will die, and the deja-vu smelt of death what the coat presented. I lighten up another cigarette. And started to smile.

"If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow."

"Who the hell said it to me?"

When I stood before the Dakota, I couldn't enter it by the main door, doorman knew me, so I walked around the building and saw an alley that seemed to be used for making deliveries to the Dakota. I entered the Alley. I was in the service alley of the Dakota. Climbing the north side of the building to my left were metal firestairs, and on the opposite side, to my right, was a large trash dumpster. I saw a tire iron lying under the dumpster. Cautiously, I climbed the steep and slippery firestairs. Guessing, at the approximate location of apartment 44, I stopped on the fourth floor in front of a small window. But the grating in front of it prevented me from opening. I took the glock in my right hand. I managed, with the help of the pistol, to smash the window through the protective grating. Glass fragments showered the interior of the room on the other side. I tried to reach some handle or something. The curtains over the window suddenly pulled apart, as if they were the last shroud covering an immense treasure. Behind them was the man who was, quite simply, me. Zane smiled broadly. I backed away. Without pausing for even a moment, he seemed to turn sideways, then unleashed a kick that dislodged the grating covering the window and sent it flying directly into my face. The impact landed me squarely on my back in the trash, I fell from the 4th floor, and stared up at the thin band of blue sky through the bars of the metal grating that came to rest on top of me. My last conscious thought was to wonder if it was he who was breaking out of the cage or if it was me who was breaking in...

"This is so familiar..."

-

_Try again. Fail again. Fail better._

"Failure and success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle." Laughing Bull pointed on the sky and laid the pipe.

"What are you trying to say?"

"You will know soon enough."

"So, tell me Swimming Bird, did you succeeded?"

"I couldn't wait for success... so I went ahead without it."

"But... what is success? I don't think I know."

"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics  
and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

"Sometimes its best to forget, to get clean of our debt."

"Debt?"

"Take this."

"It will help you..."

-

I began to stir. I became aware of a general pain that seemed portioned out to each limb and organ with complete fairness, making each equally miserable. Then my head began to throb with a special focused aching that set it apart as my most unbearable pain. Without willing it I found that I was crying. I forced the tears to stop. I gritted my teeth and tried to 'think' my way to the other side of the pain. I heard a low moaning sound. I was not sure whether it was me who was moaning or someone else. "God Damn." I managed to whisper. It made me feel marginally better. My eyes were closed, and my eyelids felt almost as though it'd be too painful to open them. I opened my eyes, painful though it was. My vision slowly slided into focus as the person next to me drew a labored breath. She tried to move the hand what was cuffed to mine, but she was too weak that only the feeblest impulse conveyed by the short steel chain that linked us. And even that effort was too much for her. Her hands fell limp upon the bloodstained sheet. I realized, I didn't know if her real name was Alice or Alison.

"Alice..." I whispered to her.

Alice cracked a feeble smile, which seemed to require as much effort as a bench press. She lifted her free hand toward her throat and whispered words I couldn't understand. The hand fell limply to her chest. Wide strips of gauze were wrapped about her lower ribcage to form a makeshift bandage. There was a bloodstain on the bandage at the level of the lowest rib. About a size of a coin. She spoke a few faltering words, too soft for me to understand more than a phrase or two:

"...never meant to...can you forgive..." Sensing that I had not understood her, again she raised her hand toward her mouth, beckoning me to come closer. Awkwardly, because of the handcuffs, I twisted around so as to be nearer Alice and better able to hear her. She touched my lips lightly as if sealing them to silence, and then her eyes closed and her head fell back against the pillow.

"Spike," she whispered. "I tried to save you. Now they'll murder both of us. Forgive me if you can." She seemed thoroughly exhausted, but my curiosity grew keener by the second.

"What happened to you?" I asked, glancing at the bandage.

"I'm really not Alice Dudley, you know. All that - the wedding, what I told you in the museum - that were all lies. My real name is Alison Abrams. I was your friend, in the syndicate, you could say I was your secretary, though my title -" At the cost of a deep shuddering, she managed to smile, then continued:

"- my title was Executive Associate. I was never your fiance. I never let you know how much I wanted to be, either. Not until your amnesia began to take hold, not until you 'died' and then 'died' again. I thought then I could deceive you into loving me. Try and forgive me. I did love you. I still do."

After some moments of silence, Alice summoned enough energy to talk.

"Your amnesia was caused by a chemical agent that you isolated and called Letheum, after the river in Hades whose waters caused forgetfulness. You first encountered the chemical when you almost died and visited your Indian friend in Texas town called Santa Candelaria where some local people had claimed there was an epidemic of amnesia."

"It was the decay product of a dishwashing detergent called Shimmer. When Shimmer is stored at very high temperatures it degrades into Letheum. The people who'd used the Shimmer that had been kept in one particular warehouse and who weren't careful about rinsing their dishes were the ones who started to develop amnesia."

"No one ever had total amnesia like yours - because no one was systematically doctoring their food with it - as I was doing with yours after you came back to Tharis and asked me to help you. Before that you'd had only minor bouts of forgetfulness from your exposure to the drug from your holding of it."

"When five years ago you first announced your relation to Julia I almost stopped working with you. I knew she was a cynical, manipulative little golddigger. But she was also an accomplished sexual athlete, and so long as you were 'training' with her, she had you jumping through hoops."

"But after you switched places with Zane, and he'd gone to Texas to be tried and serve your sentence, you started leeching around, wandering like a dog."

"When Julia found out that you were alive and living happily, she went down to the prison where Zane was serving your term and got him to marry her, so that legally she had your name - and bank account."

Any further effort at all seemed to exhaust and exalt Alice. She had fallen into a kind of faint. After some time gone by, I managed to revive her.

"I want to know one more thing. Who is John?" I asked knowing that I wasn't.

"There was a real John Cameron, or so I was told. He died in a swimming accident, and his father, who was some kind of small time gangster, sold me his identity so I could help you stay hidden in Tharis while Zane was in prison. You told me you couldn't stand to go back to that prison, and you had enough money you didn't have to. The nightmares you used to have..."

"Do you remember anything about your fortune?" Alice asked.

"No."

"Your father's fortune came from a patent for a popular sedative, Bromonine, but eventually his company produced a great range of pharmaceuticals. He died when you were ten, and the money went into a trust that provided a very nice income."

"Nice, until the family fortune got your mother what got busted for murder of your father, they stopped the bank account and you went into orphanage, then grew in syndicate..."

She stopped when I gloomed.

"You didn't let anyone but me know about Letheum in Santa Candelaria, And it is potentially worth a fortune. You did it all in a little hotel room. But before you could bring the formula back, something happened with you and the sheriff's daughter, and he trumped something..."

She looked at me.

"Your eyes are beautiful, different colors."

"I had this strange feeling each time I saw them, like if someone else was driving..."

"Alice..."

"You were never dog, you were wolf."

Alice, who had seemed to be getting stronger and stronger, stopped speaking abruptly, like a radio that had its dial twisted to an empty station. Her eyes stared vacantly into mine. _Is she dead?_ I reached for a pulse in her wrist. There was none. Her own hand, cuffed to mine, dangled limply as I placed my hand on her chest to see if her heart still beat.  
There was no heartbeat either.

"I shut my eyes, in order to see..."

_Even the wolf without fangs can bite._

She was dead.

I was emotionally drained and laid on the bed, almost as lifeless as the corpse beside me. I was unaware of how much time gone by. I could hear voices in the outer corridor, and footsteps. The nausea I felt earlier was almost gone. A doorbell rang, or maybe it was a telephone. A moment later the door of the room opened. Zane came into the room. He removed the handcuffs and lifted me roughly to my feet, then he marched me into a room furnished with a desk and some chrome-and-leather chairs. In a moment they bound me securely to one of the chairs with a piece of rope.

"Someone should bring our other guest in to enjoy the party," Julia commented. "Would you gentlemen be so kind?"

When Luke and Zane left the room, she turned to me.

"My advice to you, Spike, is to speak only when spoken to. Zane has been abusing a controlled substance, and he's not quite in his right mind. He may explode over a trifle."

"Red eye, it figures." I remembered his strength.

A moment later Faye entered the room, with Zane behind her. Zane had gun in his right hand, and a faraway look in his bloody eyes.  
When she saw me, Faye rushed forward to embrace my bound body.

"Spike! Spike, thank heavens, its you! When that other man came to the door, I thought for one awful moment that he was you, and that you'd lost your memory again, or that I'd lost my mind."

"Where is your father?" Julia asked.

"In the bedroom, mopping up." Zane replied.

I started to gloom again.

"Good," She replied as she took out the disc. "While I boot this, would you see that Miss Valentine is comfortable?"

"Be comfortable," Zane said, waving the gun at Faye, "have a seat."

Faye whispered that she loves me, then sat in the chair nearest to me.

Julia turned to me and said, "All you have to do is give us the information we want, and you'll both be released unharmed. Will you cooperate?"

"I don't trust you one bit, but under the circumstances," I looked at Faye. "I will."

"A wise decision, Spike." Julia said.

She stared at the screen for a while, tapping the keyboard periodically.

"Our plans require that we access the data on the disc."

"You've encrypted the files, and use riddles to control access to them. If you cooperate by providing the answers to the riddles, we'll let you and Miss Valentine use the false passports the late Miss Abrams obtained for you to go off with her to Ganymede."

"Isn't that right, Zane?"

Zane nodded happily. "Sure, why not? Me and Spike were good friends in the orphanage. I don't want to murder the bastard if I don't have to."

Zane winked. With his free hand he helped himself to scratch his eyes, of the red eye that had put him, momentarily, into such good mood.

"This is really dynamite stuff. I'd share with you, for old time sake, but you better keep your head straight for those riddles, pal. Sorry if that seems unfriendly."

_Go to hell._

Julia smiled with satisfaction. "So you see, Spike, how much there is to be gained if you'll only be trusting and cooperative. Now let's begin, shall we?"

_You too._

Julia inserted the disc into the drive. It whirred and the first block of text appeared on the screen. Julia asked "Are you near enough the screen to read the first riddle?"

Now when she mentioned I felt pain above my left eye and blood in it.

"No."

Zane pushed the chair with me to nearer to the monitor of the computer until the words came into focus.

"Now," Julia demanded, "read what's there and tell me what the answer is."

"Although I talk of no one and of nothing else but me and mine, I hope you will not understand just who I am until the line revealing all my taradiddle as the substance of -------." I read the riddle.

"Well," Julia said, "what's the answer?"

"Riddle."

"Yes," Julia agreed. "It's pretty obvious. I hope they're all so easy." She typed the answer on the keyboard, and a large block of text appeared on the screen. The text seemed to have to do with my staying at the Sunderland Hotel -- it was hard to read all of it, as Julia scrolled through the text quickly. The text on the screen broke off, and was replaced by second riddle:

"With every question that I pose, the keener curiosity grows. Who? I ask, and then, a moment later, How come? And when? And where's our waiter? What am I?"

Julia turned to me. "The answer, please."

"Question mark."

"Mm-hm," Julia said, and typed question mark.

It was correct answer, and the monitor responded with another long unscrolling of text. Julia read through this body of text, but couldn't find what she was looking for. The text on the screen broke off, and third riddle appeared:

_I am Evolution's way of saying:  
'you've had long enough to play.'  
I'm the unveiling of the skull,  
the barnacles of the hull,  
to show the noble wreck beneath,  
as all shall learn who feel my teeth.  
What am I?_

"Good God, that's nothing but poetry! It doesn't make sense." Julia said.

"Read it aloud," Zane suggested.

Julia read the riddle aloud.

"You know what it could be," Zane said. "It could be Nemesis."

"Nemesis," Julia repeated.

Zane nodded. "Sure, it's the comet that killed all the dinosaurs. I'll bet that's what it is."

Julia asked me: "Do you have a better idea?" Clearly she didn't set much stock in 'Nemesis'.

"Bald." My answer worked.

Julia scanned the text mounting exasperation, and muttered, "Damn, no formula." She went to the next file, which was protected by yet another riddle. Julia read it aloud:

"Without and within I am skin after skin core I have none, And I shall be undone by the slice of your knife. It's a hell of a life. Who am I?"

"That one's obvious," Zane said. "The answer is hooker, right?"

"What?" Julia responded.

"Well, its hell of a life when you come down to it, and getting knifed is almost what you'd call an occupational hazard."

Julia gave Zane a peculiar look, then turned to me: "Do you have a better answer to the riddle, Spike?"

"Onion."

Julia typed 'Onion' and another installment of my memories scrolled down the screen.

"Son of a bitch," Zane said angrily. "Where's the frigging formula!"

Julia called up the fifth and final riddle, which was prefaced by a preliminary warning:

_--CAUTION--  
Access to file 5 is controlled by the two letter answer to the following riddle.  
If a wrong answer is given, File 5 will self destruct._

_At the end of struggle,  
I give peace,  
A chance to breathe,  
another lease on life.  
Receive me and achieve surcease,  
For I am sweet Amnes--._

Julia frowned. "It seems too easy. There must be a trick." She turned round to look at me intently. "What are the two letters, Spike?"

I hesitated, fearful of what Julia and Zane would do once they had access to the last file and I would lost my usefulness to them. Zane placed the pistol against my head and released the safety. "Answer the lady's question, or I am going to blow your head off! What ARE the two letters?"

"IA! Its amnesia, are you stupid or what?" I said.

"Yes, but it seems so obvious," Julia said. "I keep thinking it must be a trick."

Suddenly Faye spoke. "The answer could also be T and Y - Amnesty. It makes just as much sense. More sense, really. I wouldn't say that amnesia has been a very great source of peace in the present case."

Zane lowered the gun and walked over to the monitor. He bended down and squinted at the screen. After much blinking, he asked Julia to read the riddle aloud. She read:

_--CAUTION--  
Access to file 5 is controlled by the two letter answer to the following riddle.  
If a wrong answer is given, File 5 will self destruct._

_At the end of struggle,  
I give peace,  
A chance to breathe,  
another lease on life.  
Receive me and achieve surcease,  
For I am sweet Amnes--._

"And the wrong answer makes the whole thing blow up?" he asked. "Is there a dynamite in it, or what? It doesn't make sense."

"A wrong answer," Julia explained patiently, "will cause file five to be erased."

"And that file probably has the formula for the drug that gave him amnesia." Zane realized.

He turned to me. "You better produce the right answer, friend, or I'll give you peace." He brandished his pistol. "A piece of lead."

"Which is it, Spike?" Julia insisted. "I-A or T-Y?"

My forehead started to sweat. One or the other.  
But since I had Amnesia, it could be only IA, but tell them the truth?

"I am pretty sure the right answer is I-A, Amnesia." I prayed for miracle.

Julia considered my response, and smiled craftily. "Do you really think I'd be so foolish as to fall into your trap? Amnesia's the obvious answer, and so-"

She typed the letters T and Y. The screen displayed a random pattern of X's and O's, and then a message appeared:

_--FILE 5 ERASED--_

"Bitch!" Zane screamed enraged. "He tells you the right answer and you've got to type in the opposite. God damn you!"

His hands clenched, and the pistol, it safety was released, fired. The screen of computer shattered, as Julia slumped forward.

"Julia!" I shouted.

A moment later the door to the room threw open and Luke burst into the room with gun drawn. "What the hell is --"

Zane spun around with his neurons - and his gun - firing. His second bullet, as deadly as the first, hit Luke neatly between the eyes. Luke's body smashed back against the doorframe, then rebound forward. The gun fell from Luke's hand and skittered across the floor, within inches of where Faye sat frozen. Zane's consciousness caught up with his reflexes and he moaned,

"Daddy! Daddy! I'm sorry!" He sank to his knees beside his father's corpse, and began to cry.

Very slowly, as though she were reaching forward to feed a squirrel that might suddenly took fright and bound away, Faye leaned forward and reached for the gun that laid on the floor. When the gun was in her hand, she stood - and Zane, with tears still in his eyes, but a strange smile on his lips, stood up too. Zane held out his free hand, as though he genuinely expected Faye to hand him back the gun. The red eye, what inspired his violent impulses was still percolating through his system. Faye watched Zane's hand slowly rising like a cobra's head. Faye fired. She was a bounty hunter after all. The bullet reached Zane low in his chest. A thoughtful expression came over his face, as though he'd been stopped not by a bullet but a new idea.

"You did it!" he said wonderingly. "You won! Son of a bitch! I didn't think--" He staggered toward the desk.

"For me this is...a genuine surprise ending." He touched his wound, and looked at the blood on his fingertips with fascination. Then he crumpled, as Faye untied the ropes that bound me.

Me and Faye headed for the back window. No one saw us take the fire escape down the alley and out onto 73rd Street. The nightmare was over, and we were still alive. Faye took my hand.

-

I woke up the next morning to the ringing of the telephone. I was asleep on the sofa in Faye's apartment, which looked just as I left it.

I picked up the phone and said, "Hello."

"I'm sorry to wake you," Faye's voice replied, "but I simply had to call as soon as I saw the headline in the Daily News."

"It covers the entire front page, in gigantic letters: _SLAUGHTER ON 8TH AVENUE!_ then in a smaller headline under that: _FOUR DEATHS IN BIZARRE LOVE NEST TRAGEDY._ Story on page three."

"Read the story Faye." I said.

"On a cassette recorder in his room, where he laid dying amid these scenes of carnage, Spike Spiegel describes how his confederate, Luke Bester, under the influence of drugs, had first murdered Miss Abrams in an effort to extort from her the whereabouts of moneys she purportedly sequestered from earlier drug transactions. Failing to do so, Bester is said to have threatened Spiegel and his wife with a gun."

"A wild gunbattle ensued, in which both Bester and Mrs. Spiegel were killed, and Spiegel himself was mortally wounded."

"In the last moments before he died, Spiegel wrote a brief account of these terrible events, and then went on to dictate a will bequeathing his entire estate to MIT, for the special purpose of doing research into the process of memory in worms, rats, and salamanders, an area in which Spiegel felt a special interest."

"Since the death of Spiegel's mother years ago, at a time when Spiegel was already member of Red Dragons syndicate, Spiegel's estate is estimated to be worth some forty million woolongs. Spiegel is not known to have other living heirs, and his bequest to MIT is not likely to be challenged in court."

Faye paused, then asked: "You're not disappointed, are you? I mean about the money. Forty mil is such a lot, but then it's nothing new for you living in cheap surroundings."

"We'll be able to afford more if you're willing to live outside Tharis... I mean don't you think love is more important than money?"

"Who, being loved, is poor?" I answered.

Faye laughed cheerfully, and said, "I never knew you'd say something like that. Don't leave bed. I'll be right home with the newspaper and a pint of Haagen-Daaz. What's your favorite flavor? No, don't tell me. I know."

"We will go to docks tomorrow Faye." I said.

"Why?"

"Don't you think Jet is a little bit lonely?"

"You remembered!"

"Yes..." I laid the receiver.

_What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now._

_Right now._

_Right now..._

_Just who the hell Am I?_

_Spike Spiegel, sure, but who am I..._

_Where am I?_

_They're dead, Julia, Vicious, Alison, Mao, Anastasia, Lin, Shin... all dead..._

I took gun in my hand.

_Right now..._

_Bang...?_

-

_Failure and success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle. --Laughing Bull_

_

* * *

_

A/N: There is still conclusion remaining.


End file.
